Stowaway
by Aurilly
Summary: The last thing Sydney wants is a roommate, but Sark shows up at her apartment with a preposterous proposition...
1. Chapter 1

Sydney walked into the conference room to find everyone already assembled: Dixon, Marshall, her father, Vaughn, and Vaughn's cow of a wife.

Her father coughed. "There you are. We'd been paging you."

"Sorry," she replied as she sat down. "I was… on the phone. I came as soon as I saw the message."

She'd actually been in the building's café, getting a cookie. She'd needed it after having watched Vaughn and Lauren coming back from lunch, all cutesy and sickening.

Apparently, she was turning into a stress eater.

"So, what's going on?"

"It's the Covenant," Dixon announced. "Our moles have all reported some kind of chaos in the upper ranks in the past few days. No one yet knows what happened, but it has to be something huge to have warranted the kinds of erratic behavior we've been hearing about."

"What kinds of behavior?" Vaughn asked.

"Communications to people and organizations the Covenant almost never does business with. Appointments with dirty banks. All we've discovered is that one name is being whispered."

"Let me guess," Sydney sighed. "Sark."

"Yes," Jack confirmed. "He's gone missing, probably rogue, and for some reason, the Covenant has made searching for him one of their top priorities. I would guess that his loyalties have changed once again, and he's willing to sell Covenant secrets to the highest bidder."

"Shocker." In a way, Sydney was glad to hear it. In the topsy-turvy world she'd returned to, it was strangely comforting to hear that at least _something_ was constant, even if it was just Sark's _in_constancy.

"Our mission is twofold. We find Sark before they do and use him to learn everything he knows about the Covenant. Simultaneously, we capitalize on this current chaos as a weakness. You're tasked with finding out everything you can about why Sark left, why the Covenant wants him back, and what their next move might be. That's it, people." Dixon adjourned the meeting.

Sydney went to the ladies room. Her mood was oddly improved, until she ran into Lauren by the sinks.

"Hey," she said, trying to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"Sydney," Lauren called, stopping her. "Next time Dixon calls an emergency meeting, do try to be on time. Your tardiness reflects poorly on the department."

"Yes, Agent Reed. It won't happen again."

Sydney headed back to the café for another cookie.

On her drive home, Sydney wondered if one of the signs of depression was not wanting to be _anywhere_. She used to be happy to come home; awaiting her were friends and food and laughter, and sometimes a boyfriend. These days, all that awaited her after work were reminders that everything good had been stripped away.

It was late (she'd been staying later and later at the office she increasingly hated, just to avoid going home) and all she'd eaten for hours had been cookies, so she was cranky and ready to turn in. She opened the door to the usual dark silence and hung her purse on the rack. She was about to turn on the lights when she heard the click of a gun chamber. She froze, and immediately conducted a mental run-through of the locations of her emergency call buttons.

"I've disabled that little device beside the counter, as well as the ones behind your bed and next to the sink. You'll find that you are quite at my mercy, Agent Bristow."

Sydney groaned. She'd know that snotty voice anywhere. A second later, light illuminated the room and there stood Sark, dressed in a white Oxford and grey slacks. His gun was trained directly at her head.

"What do you want, Sark?"

"Oddly enough, for you to allow me to put myself under _your_ mercy."

She was too tired to fight, and definitely too tired for his usual bullshit. If the one thing Sydney hadn't needed tonight was the world's most dangerous assassin in her living room, cryptic half-explanations were right out. "What does that even mean?"

"To put it more plainly, I desire the use of your apartment as a temporary retreat."

Well, _that_ was rich, even for Sark.

"And what in hell makes you think I'd let you stay here?"

He smiled that bland, condescending smile she'd always wanted to smack away. "Well, the gun ensures that you remain still long enough to hear my proposal. Then, hopefully, my arguments will elicit a more amicable cooperation and cohabitation."

Damn him and his many-syllable words when she was starving. "Your proposal? How many times do we have to go through this? I'm never going to work for you."

"That was not my suggestion. I'm here today to offer you a trade. As I'm sure you already know, I currently occupy the number one slot on the Covenant's most wanted list."

"Yeah, I know, and I hope they torch your skinny ass," she snapped. But then curiosity got the better of her. "What did you do to them?"

"I emptied their bank accounts."

That was impressive, even for Sark, but she wasn't about to say as much and let him gloat. "You mean you stole from them."

"I reclaimed what was rightfully mine."

"What does that have to do with my apartment?"

"I fled to the last place anyone would ever expect to find me. Our long-standing antagonism and your unfortunate dislike of me are well-known. My proposal is that you shelter me here in this apartment for a few weeks—"

"_Weeks?_" He'd gone off his rocker. Seriously.

Without missing a beat, he continued, "And in return I will provide you with what you want most."

Sydney snorted, and suddenly felt too tired to stand. He clearly wasn't going to shoot her before getting an answer out of her, so she might as well sit down. She slumped onto one of her kitchen island stools. He didn't seem to mind; the gun simply followed the movement of her head. "What do you know about what I want?"

"You want the Covenant destroyed. You want an end to Rambaldi. You want to reclaim some semblance of a normal life."

On the whole… yes, those were most of the things she wanted. On most days, Vaughn would appear on that list, but she doubted even Sark had the balls to offer something that impossible. However, it wasn't that clever of a list. Anyone could have guessed that she yearned for those things. Still, she might as well hear him out. He clearly wasn't planning on leaving anytime soon, and she might as well keep him talking until she found a way to get rid of him.

"That's a hefty offer. How do you expect to give me all that?"

"I have intelligence that will help you lead the CIA in destroying the organization. With the money I have reclaimed, they are already weakened. Together, we can stop them for good, destroy Rambaldi's work, and free ourselves from his fanatics. With that final task completed, we can both move on with our lives, do whatever we want."

"If the plan is to have me give information to the CIA, why not just turn yourself in and work with them directly?"

"After two years in one of those less-than-charming cells, I think you'll understand my reluctance to return. And with this arrangement, I gain the added bonus of your company." He bowed. Sydney could never tell if he was always so annoyingly formal because people expected that kind of shit from him, or if he really meant it.

"Goody for me. Anyway, we've been down this road before. Why should I trust you? For all I know, your plan is to get all of us killed."

"Check your records at the agency. Do your research. You will see that no new organization has contracted my services. I am on my own now. Despite appearances to the contrary, Sydney, I have been on my own since your disappearance."

Sydney didn't know why he was linking their separate misfortunes, but whatever. He was still right. She thought back to Sark in the cell and her mother's betrayal of him when he'd needed her most. Sydney may have had no memories of the past two years, but Sark had nothing to remember in the first place. Not that she pitied him. Never that. But as she pondered his offer, she noticed a red spot on the side of his shirt. He'd been holding the gun strangely. Sark was hurt, probably shot while getting away. He really _was_ on his own.

Not letting on that she had noticed anything, she asked, "What's your guarantee?"

"I have none. I could pay you handsomely for your cooperation, of course, but our previous interactions have made it clear that your principles would prevent you from accepting money from me."

"Damn right they would."

"So all I can give you is my word, for however much that is worth to you. And these flowers." Sark gestured, with the slightest hint of pain, to the coffee table, upon which was a beautiful arrangement of white lilies.

"You brought me flowers?" Of all the surprises of the evening, this was the biggest. She would have preferred a turkey sub, but hey.

"A housewarming gift," Sark clarified.

She looked at him, at the smartly dressed but bleeding young man with a gun trained on her in her own home. Despite the ridiculousness of the entire situation, this man, a maniac she'd spent years trying to kill, was the first guy who'd brought her flowers in longer than she, quite literally, could remember. "You are unbelievable."

"I aim to please."

"And," Sydney continued, "you know that your 'proposal' is completely out of the question. You'd better get out of here right this minute, or else I'm going to kill you."

"I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this but…" He sighed dramatically. "I have information. Information proving that Sydney Bristow, aka Julia Thorne, was a traitor to her country. That she was a triple agent, selling American secrets back to the Covenant."

Sydney felt a coldness creeping up her back. With measured tone, she asked, "What are you talking about?"

"Proof that the Covenant found a way to break the brainwashing block taught by Project Christmas and was able to turn you into a dangerous assassin. That they implanted you with mental triggers. That you could be turned on at any moment and do anything."

Sydney blanched. Sark had never been above playing dirty, but he'd sunk to levels even Sydney hadn't thought possible. "No one would believe you," she whispered.

"Oh, but they would. There is video, there are documents. And how could you defend yourself? You erased your memories so they would never learn of your betrayal. Too bad your own self-mutilation was for nothing." Without taking the gun off target, Sark walked to the couch where he picked up a folder that Sydney hadn't noticed before. He tossed it over to her. "See for yourself."

Inside were documents so beautifully forged that Sydney doubted even her father would have questioned their legitimacy. Documents on Covenant letterhead signed by real psychiatrists, Covenant officials, and handlers, all saying that Julia Thorne was a perfect example of a brainwashed agent. It was the kind of file the CIA had on its own agents, with perfectly doctored pictures of Sydney doing unimaginable things, of transcripts of conversations she was sure she never had.

"This is sick."

He shrugged, his face expressionless.

"These are copies," she noted, when he didn't reply.

"I would hardly leave the originals in your reach. They are in a safe place, and at my command, they can and will be sent, through roads the CIA will trust, to Langley, where I imagine you will face trial and a certain life sentence."

It was true. The documents were too good. Sydney wondered how long Sark had spent getting them made, and how much he'd laughed while coming up with all the diabolical little details she was skimming over.

"As you can see," he continued, "the choice is clear. Refuse my offer and attempt to have me captured, and you will both fail to bring down the Covenant and also seal your own downfall. On the other hand, let me stay here, work with me, and you'll both keep your good name and achieve the end of your mission."

"If I agree, what happens to these papers?"

"The originals and all copies of them documents disappear. As soon as you agree to work with me, you will have my word and we need not ever speak of this again. This is all a distasteful but necessary measure to secure your cooperation. I stand to gain nothing from discrediting you."

Well, that was one thing she could always count on Sark for: not to bother with things that wouldn't gain him anything. Sydney trusted Sark only as far as logic allowed her to; she believed he would keep his word, on this point, at least.

She didn't want to immediately show that she had made up her mind, hateful though the other options were. With her hands up, Sydney began to walk slowly towards the kitchen. "How about you put that thing down? I don't see how I could ever agree to this if I'm going to live my life with a gun to my head."

"I simply want to ensure that you don't shoot me. That would be to neither of our best interests."

"I don't know about you, but that would suit my interests just fine," she snapped. But underneath the words was resignation. She knew she was going to go through with it. "I'm going to make a sandwich and think, okay?"

"Take your time."

As she cut bread under his watchful eye, counting the minutes until he had to give in to the pain of his wound and lower the gun, Sydney decided that she believed him. It was typical Sark: use the enemy of my enemy to bring someone else down. She knew all about that mentality. In this, they were the same.

Life really _did_ suck when Sydney had to admit that she and Sark had anything at all in common.

"Are you really going to eat that?" he asked, shocked as she opened the jar of peanut butter on the counter.

"Yeah, I am. Got a problem with that?"

Sark perched himself on the back of the couch and rested the gun on his lap, but it was still trained at her skull. "None, except that it's revolting."

Okay. Maybe not _that_ much in common.

"If you're going to stay here, you'd better get used to the contents of my kitchen."

"Do you mean we have an agreement?" he asked while she assembled her sandwich.

Sydney turned around slowly and took a bit of her sandwich. "You don't leave me much of a choice."

"Do I have your word?" he insisted.

"Yes." It unnerved Sydney how much emphasis and faith he seemed to put on either of their 'words of honour'. She certainly took his with a giant boulder of salt; why didn't he do the same with hers?

Sark didn't even have the decency to look relieved as he lowered his gun. Sydney decided when all this was done and the Covenant destroyed, she'd throttle the insolence out of him.

"We have to set some ground rules, first, though," Sydney continued.

"I expected no less."

"First, I don't cook for you. I don't clean for you. You keep the place neat and fend for yourself."

"Of course."

"Second, stay the hell out of my bedroom and keep your grubby hands off my stuff." Sydney told him this, not believing for a second that he would.

Sark looked at his hands. "Grubby? I had no idea. I'll have to add Purell to the list of things I'll need."

"I sure as hell am not shopping for you. You make do with what I have."

His eyes wandered disparagingly towards where the peanut butter jar sat. "I will endeavor to sink to your level."

Sydney rolled her eyes. "That brings me to number three: try not to talk so damn much. You give me a headache. Also, stay out of sight while I'm at work. The last thing either of us need is for the CIA to find out I'm harboring a known fugitive. You're number one on their most wanted list, too, you know."

"It's always so gratifying to be reminded of one's popularity," he replied, and then winced.

"So, what's that?" she asked, pointing at the red spot in his shirt that was obviously finally taking its toll.

He craned his neck to inspect the sartorial damage. "I had an unfortunate encounter this morning. Someone saw me and took a shot, but I got away. I bandaged it up as soon as I got here, though. No need to worry."

"Trust me, I wasn't."

They were silent for a moment, sizing one another up as they had so many times before, but this time was going to be different, prolonged. Sydney already felt tired just thinking about it, but she had no choice. It was either get thrown into jail for crimes she hadn't committed or else possibly bring down the Covenant.

"Where will I sleep?" he asked next, visibly relaxing his body for the first time. They both knew that their silent stare-off had heralded a new era in Sark-Bristow relations. He poked at the couch cushions beneath him. "Is this a pull-out?" He made a moue of resigned discontent.

"Nope, it's just a regular couch. You'll have to put a sheet down and curl up. It should be long enough, though. You aren't _that_ tall."

"So generous, as always."

Sydney went to the linen closet and took out some sheets and a blanket. She almost automatically went to fetch the extra pillow from her room but then reminded himself that this was _Sark_, who didn't deserve pillows. On her way back to the living room, she spotted a big black duffel on the floor of the bathroom, where he must have left it after bandaging himself.

"Get that bag out of the bathroom," she snapped upon her return to the living room. She chucked the sheets at him. "I've got to get ready for bed."

"My apologies. Where would you like me to keep it going forward?" His voice betrayed that he was just as exhausted as she was, and glad that they had finally sorted it out.

"You can keep it in the hall closet. And you can use the bathroom after I'm done."

She stormed into the bathroom and tossed the bag out before shutting the door. By the time she'd finished brushing her teeth, Sark had 'made the couch' and was obsessively tucking the fitted sheet under the cushions as though it were a real mattress. She pretended not to notice and went right into her bedroom.

"Good-night, Sydney," she heard him call just before shutting the door. She leaned her back against it and sighed.

Well, at least she wouldn't dread going to work anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

Sydney walked into the office the next morning feeling like everyone must be able to _smell_ the secret on her. She hadn't felt like this since her SD-6 days. Well, she supposed she had felt like this during her time as Julia Thorne, but what she couldn't remember didn't count. Sadly, however, this bout of secrecy was less fulfilling than the previous ones, because Sydney wasn't entirely sure she was in the right here. Working with Sark, much less hiding him in her apartment, didn't fall into the category of 'unequivocally patriotic'. Actually, it stank of 'terrible idea.'

Sark had been so convincing the night before, but then again, he'd always been very persuasive. There was something about his know-it-all demeanour that had always made her (and probably everyone he interacted with) repress her natural instincts to put a bullet in his head long enough to listen to him.

Well, that and the blackmail.

She'd tried her best to make a racket in the morning, banging the cereal bowls and slamming the kitchen cupboards and opening all the blinds in the living room. If Sark's sleep was disturbed, he didn't give her the satisfaction of showing it. His face remained buried in the corner of the couch, and his body was completely hidden under the sheet.

On her way out, she'd found a note taped to the door. She'd wondered for a second where he'd found the scotch tape, but her efforts to ruin his morning had resulted in her running late, so she grabbed it and ran, waiting to read it in traffic.

It was now burning a hole in her pocket.

"Hey, Syd!" Dixon called. She waved back, feeling guilty. "Meeting in ten!"

Sydney stopped by her desk to put down her jacket and bag. She turned on her computer and mused on what Sark had written. She almost hoped to catch the little prick in a lie so she'd be justified in hauling his ass in, screw the blackmail. She did a quick check in the system, and found that indeed there _was_ a Zurich bank account for a Sergei Børn matching the numbers Sark had given her. Very little more research proved him to be an associate of one of The Covenant's board members.

Armed with a few print-outs of intel she could have gotten on her own so that she wouldn't look suspicious, Sydney went to the conference room, feeling just a twinge of disappointment at having Sark turn out to be right. Her fellow colleagues were already gathered and had already begun to scratch their heads and avoid eye contact with Dixon.

"So, what's everyone got?" Dixon asked as an opener.

There were a lot of hems and haws as everyone threw out patently half-baked ideas.

"Well, I've got something… maybe," Marshall offered just before Sydney was about to say her piece.

"Hopefully something good," Dixon replied.

"I don't know about _good_, but… so I figured instead of looking at the Covenant, I'd try looking for Sark, you know? And, well, he was last seen in LA, so I wondered: what if he didn't get far? I mean, not that we should worry about a guy like Sark being in trouble… I'm sure he can take care of himself, but… So I've been looking around for him. Got a spotting yesterday on a traffic camera in Malibu at quarter to eight in the evening. He was walking along Rodeo Drive."

Marshall showed a video feed of Sark coming out of Armani. Sydney fumed with rage. _She_ didn't even have time to go shopping, and here he was…

But then she remembered the bullet wound. The crustiness of it timed it at a few hours old, and she'd gotten home at nine. Sark had been shot _before_ going shopping. Sydney may have been angry, but she had to give him credit for sheer toughness.

"I lost him after that," Marshall continued. "But if it's any consolation, I hacked into the store's system and matched the time he exited with the purchases logged. He bought two pairs of black pajama pants and a bunch of black teeshirts, and ten pairs of boxers."

"Pajamas?" Jack sounded incredulous, and Sydney willed her face not to redden with guilt. "This hardly sounds like a man in trouble."

"Yeah, but…" Marshall was getting too close, and Sydney saw that, for her plan to work, she would need to step in quickly. She still wasn't completely sure she could trust Sark's intel, but here was her chance to find out.

"Sark's always been able to get wherever he wants to go. I'm sure he's far away from here by now… probably on a yacht somewhere drinking champagne and being insufferable," she blurted, hopefully not too quickly and while avoiding eye contact with her father. Putting a spin on what she'd read in the note, she continued, "I thought of something last night and confirmed it just now. Sergei Børn. Former financier of The Covenant. He recently received a wire transfer to his Zurich account. $200 million. I think he might be worth taking into custody for questioning. We can get him with pictures of cockfighting that I found out he runs." She went on to explain what Sark had written in a way that matched all of her official information to the rapt audience.

"This sounds promising," Dixon congratulated her when she finished. "I'll have the Zurich branch send out a team today."

"A team? Not me?" she asked, unsure if she would have been more pleased to get away from her home or scared to leave Sark alone in it.

"It sounds like a standard op, no reason to send you over there. Plus, you seem to be on a roll, research-wise. You're more valuable here."

They planned for a few more minutes and talked about other projects before Dixon finally adjourned the meeting. Sydney exhaled for the first time all morning. In the doorway, she was stopped by her father. "Sydney, is everything alright?"

"Sure, dad. Why wouldn't it be?" she lied.

"You're acting strangely today. I was concerned about you in the meeting just now."

"Why? I had the answers. I got us a lead. Everything's fine," she replied, annoyed that being on top of her game (or at least, as far as anyone else knew) should provoke such concern.

On her way back to her desk, she passed Lauren, who stopped her to say, "Good work this morning, Sydney. You seem in better form than you were yesterday."

"Yeah, thanks." Between Sark in the house and Lauren in the office, Sydney was sick of blondes with smooth accents giving her backhanded compliments.

It was late by the time Sydney returned home. She told Dixon (and herself) that she was staying to hear the results of the Zurich mission. The CIA operatives in Switzerland had captured him easily enough and taken control of the assets in the account Sark had told Sydney about. Børn wasn't talking yet, but everyone hoped it would just be a matter of time before he opened up about his connections to the Covenant's board and its operations. In the meanwhile, between the money the CIA had captured from him (not to mention the money Sark had "recuperated"-but the CIA didn't know about that yet), the organization was infinitely weaker than it had been a week ago.

One down, probably one hundred more steps to go. It was a small victory, but still more headway than the CIA had made on the Covenant in months. Little did they know that they had Sark to thank for it.

Even after staying late, Sydney found excuses to delay her way back to her apartment. She filled up her car with gas, double-checked when her cell phone contract would run out, and ran various errands that didn't need to be run. She didn't need a new bathmat, especially not at 10pm on a Tuesday, but she bought one. She also stopped to eat a hamburger at In-and-Out burger. Sydney felt pathetic sitting alone at her plastic table, stuffing her face while listening to the inane chatter of teenagers on dates. She ought to have been home, but she couldn't bear the embarrassment of letting Sark watch her eat again, or the even more unthinkable horror of having to dine _with_ him. Knowing that there was hardly anything to eat in the house, she had a brief thought of bringing him some fries, but she pushed the inappropriately sympathetic impulse out of her mind. There was plenty of milk. The bastard could subsist on cereal for as long as he pestered her with his presence. Or starve.

It was almost eleven when she'd finally parked underneath her apartment building and was riding the elevator to the lobby. The doorman on duty waved her down.

"Ms. Bristow! There's a package for you." Ralph dragged two huge boxes out of the closet behind him. They were marked "Barnes & Noble." Sydney couldn't remember having ordered any books, and for a second she wondered if they were filled with anthrax. It was too much of a coincidence to get an unexpected package the day after Sark had arrived at her home. Was someone after him? Not that she minded of course, but it would be preferable to off him in a way that caused her as little bother as possible. Either way, she'd have Sark open them and perhaps they could disable whatever was wrong together without alerting suspicion.

"These are pretty heavy. Let me help you carry them upstairs." Ralph loaded the boxes onto a hand cart and followed her into the elevators. She could have managed on her own, but one of Sydney's few little joys in life was letting Ralph treat her like a lady. He was the only one who did.

"I can take it from here," she said once they'd reached her front door.

"You sure?"

"Positive. Thanks so much."

As soon as he was out of sight, Sydney took out her gun. She decided to leave the boxes outside until she knew what Sark was up to. She opened the door and was greeted with… absolutely nothing. The lights were out and the blinds were drawn, and if she hadn't know better, she wouldn't have thought anyone was there at all.

Maybe no one _was_ there?

"Sark?" she called softly as soon as she'd shut the door behind her. She flicked on the lights and saw his blonde head pop up from behind the kitchen island to meet the gun that was already peeping over the counter. In a moment, the stance of the trained assassin had disappeared and the bored smirk of a self-satisfied asshole had returned.

"Good evening, Sydney. You're home even later than last night. I was getting worried-"

Sydney decided she preferred the assassin.

"I don't need you to worry about me," she snapped, more annoyed at herself for feeling relieved than annoyed at him.

"I wasn't. It's simply that I scheduled a delivery to arrive between 10:30 to 11 and I was afraid you might not arrive in time to sign for it."

"Huh?" She thought of the boxes sitting outside the door. "No, they already came. Why are you-"

At that moment, the buzzer rang. Sydney went to pick up the intercom.

It was Ralph. "Miss Bristow, your delivery is here. I'm sending him up."

"What the _hell_ have you done?" she spat at Sark upon hanging it up again.

Sark smiled blandly. "I'm simply making this situation more pleasurable for both of us."

"The only way you can do that is to leave."

"Now Sydney, we both know I can't do that."

"You... _you scheduled a delivery?_ I thought you were going to stay out of sight, not let anyone know you're here, fall off the face of the planet. You know, the usual."

"Yes, that was indeed part of the arrangement," he answered coolly.

"So what the hell are you doing, contacting people? Sending deliveries to my house?" Sydney tried to drown her fear in bravado, as usual. But inside, she was panicking and kicking herself. She'd walked right into this trap. Clearly, he'd sent people to kill her. This had never been about the Covenant. How stupid could she possibly be? How could she have trusted him for a minute?

The doorbell rang and Sydney picked up her gun again.

"I assure you that there's no need for that," Sark drawled as he went to hide behind the couch. "He is nothing more than a normal delivery man."

Sydney yanked open the door, keeping one hand on the trigger of the gun she held behind her back. She saw a skinny guy in a uniform and cap who smiled shyly at her. "Sydney Bristow? I've got your groceries."

"What?" Sydney watched, stunned as the man unloaded at least six large cardboard boxes into her vestibule. She studied him with a trained eye. He didn't _seem_ dangerous. As Sark had said, he appeared to be nothing more than a delivery man. He even pushed the two Barnes & Noble boxes in after all of his own.

"Can I get a signature here?" he asked once he'd finished.

"Um, sure."

"Throwing a party?" he asked.

"Huh?" Sydney was beyond confused at this point.

"You got a lot of really nice stuff. Just wondered."

"No, it's all for me," she replied. The guy raised his eyebrows.

"Okay. Have a nice night!"

Sydney closed the door after him and turned slowly towards Sark, who, for the second time that night, was rising from his hiding place with an obnoxious smirk on his face.

"Groceries?" she asked.

"Part of the arrangement we agreed to last night was that you would not shop for me. Therefore, I shopped for myself. I can't leave the premises… hence, the online grocery delivery service. I have restocked your kitchen. You're very welcome." He began carrying the boxes into the kitchen so that he could start unpacking. Conversationally, he added, "How did my information about Børn play out?"

Sydney was too angry to let him change the topic to something that would end up being congratulatory for him. "How did you pay for this? You're not even supposed to be here."

"With your credit card number. You don't imagine that I came here unprepared, do you? As far as anyone potentially spying on you will find, an order was placed by Sydney Bristow, from your usual IP address, during a time when you were at home to do so. I did it last night after you went to bed." Sark used a knife to cut open the tape on the first box and started unloading fresh-squeezed orange juice into the fridge. A lasagna soon followed.

"By 'not shopping' I didn't just mean the physical act of going to the store. I also meant that I'm not spending money on you. I can't afford all this," she protested as he next pulled out a giant package of Spanish ham.

Sark reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a check. "A belated birthday present from your Aunt Lucinda in Minnesota. At eighty years old, I'm sure she has no idea that a large deposit was recently made into her bank account. I think you'll find that it covers both of today's purchases."

Sydney took the check and turned it over in her hands. The forgery of the signature was perfect. A thought occurred to her. "You made this deposit before today?"

"Yes," he replied as he began to unload stacks of prepared foods into the fridge.

"But you had no way of knowing whether or not I would say yes to this awful arrangement."

"Of course I did. You'd have been a fool to refuse. And I know you, Sydney; you are no fool."

As a way of ignoring the insulting fact that he'd just paid her a compliment, Sydney watched as he put away what seemed like a million boxes and packages. Sure, there were also myriad packets of stinky cheese, but overall, Sydney was shocked to see that, when left to his own devices, Sark ate like a _guy_. There was prepared shepherd's pie, chili, ravioli, tomato sauce, pizzas, and barbequed wings.

She figured the real issue was that he had never learned how to cook, and had bought the easiest things to reheat.

"Aren't you worried that all that junk food and no exercise is going to make you fat?"

"Luckily for both of us, I am not a woman." He didn't even look up at her. It was as if he had a stockpile of good comebacks for every hostile remark she was able to come up with. She swore that before this was all over, she'd one-up him somehow.

She was about to think of a new reason to berate him when he started opening the last two boxes. The sight of a dozen wine bottles startled her intentions away. "You can get wine delivered?" she asked with genuine interest.

"Not of the quality to which I am accustomed, but yes. Since you don't have a wine rack, I am going to leave these bottles by the stereo, if that is alright with you."

He didn't even wait for her response before lugging the boxes to a corner of the living room.

Sydney hated that Sark seemed to feel more at home in her apartment than she did herself. She'd never warmed up to this new space, and she still missed her old house, with its warm-colored walls and all of her stuff, gathered over the years. But Sark struck her as the kind of guy who'd be comfortable _anywhere_-no attachments, no sentiments, no nostalgia. She thought bitterly that her house was probably just another hotel suite to him.

"I take it from the fresh-looking ketchup stain on the corner of your mouth that you have already eaten?" he asked, jolting her out of her reverie.

Sydney repressed the urge to reach out and strangle him. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, and sure enough, there was something moist and red on her mouth. "Yeah, I ate. Why?"

"I was simply wondering how much to heat up." He read the instructions on his soup carefully and turned on the microwave.

"The mission went well," she said, realizing that they really ought to be talking business. Also, she needed to distract herself; even though she was perfectly full, the sight of all that food had made her hungry again, but she'd die before she let him know. "The Zurich team nabbed Børn."

"Excellent." Sark was barely paying attention, his gaze absorbed by the sight of his soup spinning in the microwave.

Sydney was at a loss. Much as she'd made a show of not wanting to work with him, the fact of the matter was that Sark was calling the shots. He was the one with all the intel on the Covenant, and he was the one who would have the information on how to run the missions. She wanted to know what to do next in order to be rid of him faster, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of asking him for commands.

Sydney noticed for the first time what he was wearing, and was reminded of something about which she could berate him.

"They're onto you, you know. Marshall got footage of you in Armani yesterday, buying the clothes you're wearing."

"I trust they were unable to trace my movements after I left," he replied, not even perturbed, the bastard.

"Nothing so far, but they're looking into it. The idea is that, based on your purchases, you've gone into hiding with some girlfriend in the States. They're looking for her."

"That should keep them busy for awhile," he said blandly, moving to take his soup out of the microwave and pour it into a bowl.

Sydney didn't know if he meant it would keep them busy because he had so many girlfriends, or because he had none. She desperately wanted to ask, but then remembered that she wasn't supposed to care.

He had effectively cut off any attempt at conversation that she could make and was officially the worst house-guest ever, as if the title had ever been in question, after the blackmail.

"And the Barnes & Noble stuff… did you charge that to me, too?"

He nodded. "For someone with a graduate degree in English literature, your home is oddly bereft of reading material. Watching game shows this morning was almost enough to make me want to give myself up."

His statement opened a wound; leave it to Sark to hurt her without even meaning to. "All of my old stuff was destroyed after I 'died'. I used to have a really nice book collection. First editions that my mother left, lots of hardcovers. I haven't had the chance to replace anything since I got back."

Sark pursed his lips, and for a split second, Sydney thought she detected a whiff of sympathy, but his words vitiated it. Lecturingly, he replied, "Given that this purchase took me about five minutes, I would say that you have lacked the inclination, not the opportunity."

Much as she hated to admit it, Sydney had to grant that he had a point. She'd come home from work every evening, knowing that reading would be just the thing to cheer her up, but she'd been too depressed to bother looking for anything.

Tapping her fingertips on the counter, she cast around for something else to say. "So… uh, what books did you buy?"

Sark poured his soup into a bowl. "Nothing as clichéd as I am sure you are imagining."

Sydney blushed. She hated how easily he seemed to be able to read her. "Try me."

Sark shrugged and brought his soup over to the couch, bringing his box-slicing knife with him. Sydney sat down on the opposite end, with one wide cushion creating a decent distance between them.

True to his word, the first thing Sark pulled out of the box was so surprising that she actually gasped. "Harry Potter? Seriously?"

"I wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

All of his actions, his insufferably laid-back attitude… it all clicked into place. "What is this to you? Some sort of vacation?"

"I have literally nothing to do. Why not catch up on some things I've been meaning to accomplish? I assumed you would prefer me to read quietly rather than bother you with conversation."

Sydney sighed. The score was now something like: Sark 10, Bristow 0. She was getting tired of trying to yell at him, so she switched tack and forced herself to calm down and try interacting with him as a human being-if that were indeed possible.

"What else have you got?" she asked archly, but not aggressively.

Sark pulled out some collections of pieces from _The New Yorker_, something by Umberto Eco (in Italian), and a recent history of Nikolai I, among other things.

"Ancestor of yours?"

Sark smiled softly. "Something like that."

Sydney rolled her eyes. Sark ate some of his soup and pulled out a giant volume of Tennyson poems.

"You're telling me that you plan to sit around my apartment all day reading romantic poetry? You've got to be kidding me."

Sark actually laughed. It was a strange, _pleasant_ sound, devoid of any of the sarcasm she was accustomed to from him. Sydney gaped.

"There is a poem I had to memorize during my school days that I would like to find again. Bits of it sometimes flit through my head, distracting me."

Little Sark in school, memorizing poetry. It was an amusing image. "What kind of school was this?"

Sark squinted at her, searchingly, as if trying to figure out where her sudden interest came from. To be honest, Sydney didn't know herself.

"It was a boarding school in Ireland, if you must know."

"For the criminally insane?" she quipped, unable to help herself.

"No, for the poshly Catholic."

"Were you a choir boy?" He simply leveled a withering stare at her instead of responding. "What? You look like you could have been a choir boy. I'll bet you were cute as a kid."

"Of course I was. I'm cute now. You've even admitted as much."

"Am I ever going to live that slip down?" she asked.

"No, never," he replied serenely, and quickly buried his face in the box again. Muffled, he added, "I was not a choir boy."

He pulled out some old movies as well as blockbusters, and a new translation of _The Count of Monte Cristo_.

"I've been meaning to read that, actually," she blurted out in enthusiasm, forgetting to maintain her practiced level of scorn.

He responded to her genuineness with a normal reaction of his own. He scratched his head sleepily and smiled at her. "I doubt I'll be able to take any of these with me when I leave, so you should consider them a gift."

"I don't want anything from you, you son of a bitch," she replied, as a way of making up for her previous lapse in hostility.

Sark sighed. Through gritted teeth, he seethed, "Then consider them the mess that I leave behind when I finally rid you of my odious presence. Does that sit better with your principles?" For the first time since he'd arrived in her home, Sark actually sounded frustrated.

"Yeah, it does," she replied. That hadn't felt as satisfying as she'd hoped.

He stopped making eye contact after that, and Sydney decided it had been a mistake to try to chat in the first place.

"It's late. I'm going to turn in," she said, standing up. "We should plan for tomorrow."

Sark was all crisp and businesslike now as he finished his soup and piled his purchases near his duffel bag in the corner, along with the wine. "I think you will have your hands full with your latest capture. And it wouldn't do for you to have more groundbreaking developments so soon after your last one."

Much as she hated having to prolong his stay with days of inactivity, she knew he was right. "Okay. Well, see you tomorrow."

He didn't dignify her with a response.

As Sydney got ready for bed, she almost felt badly for taunting him. _Almost_. At any rate, it was aggravating her more than it was him. She resolved to think of new tactics for dealing with him going forward.


	3. Chapter 3

Sydney woke up the next morning with a more positive outlook. She decided to stop letting Sark's presence ruin whatever little life rituals she still had. She'd been too busy trying to annoy him the previous morning to go for a run, but, she resolved, no more.

It was a fantastic morning, and the exercise cleared her thoughts. When she'd finished her loop, she jogged home and froze upon hearing the click of a gun chamber as she opened her apartment door. Almost immediately, she felt a breath of wind as a bullet narrowly missed grazing her rib. She dove towards the floor, where she knew there was a gun in a basket near the door. Having grabbed it, she pointed it in the direction of the couch, and looked up. Sark, his eyes lidded with sleep, was still lying on the couch, but had a gun trained at her chest.

"Sark, what the _hell_ are you doing?"

He stared at her, so intently yet blankly that she wondered if he could even see properly, and then realization, or at least consciousness, seemed to dawn. He looked at the gun, and then at her, before dropping it and climbing over the couch to practically fall on top of her. "Sydney?" he asked, squinting.

Now that the immediate danger had passed, she noticed how truly asleep he'd been, and still sort of was, and marveled at how quick his reflexes were even when he had no idea what was going on. "Why are you trying to kill me?"

He looked at where the bullet had landed in the wall behind her and then back at her. "Sydney, I didn't… are you hurt? I… I had no intention… I…" Sputtering and murmuring, he started feeling her side, patting her down.

"Get your hands off me!" She slapped him away, half in reflexive disgust and half in shock. Sydney had never seen him like this before, wild-eyed and muzzy-headed, with his pajamas rumpled and seemingly no rational thought underlying his actions—just pure instinct. Moreover, he seemed genuinely _concerned_ that he might have injured her. Why he should care was beyond her. He didn't like her; he didn't give a shit about her as long as she held up her side of the bargain.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked, scratching his head and making his hair stick out in an even more hilarious manner.

"No, lucky for both of us, you're a shitty shot."

He was definitely waking up, because there was a bit more of his habitual sarcasm when he replied, "I'm an excellent shot, as you well know. I was simply asleep. I thought you were an assassin. I didn't expect you to enter at this hour." Now that his eyes were better functioning, he looked at her more closely. Then, with surprise, he added, "You're sweaty!"

"It's something that happens when you exercise," she quipped.

Sark stood up and offered her a hand to help her to her feet. She ignored it and got up on her own. "I've never seen you sweat before. It's… novel."

Sydney suddenly felt self-conscious in a way she hadn't before around him. Great. Yet another thing to hate about having him here. With every passing day, she felt as though, no matter how hard she tried to keep him out, he continued to get under her skin and past her defenses. She had hoped to keep this cold and professional, but when he started commenting on her sweat, it was hard to keep that distance. "Well, sometimes I go for a run in the morning. So, next time, not so fast on the trigger, okay?"

Sark climbed back onto the couch and pulled the sheets over him again. "I'll train my unconscious to expect the possibility of your entrance at this time of the morning."

Train his subconscious? "So you _are_ a robot. This explains so much. Try not to fall asleep again and shoot me when I leave the bathroom."

Out of the corner of her eye as she walked away, she could see that she'd managed to shame him. He looked like a little boy who'd just been scolded. The crooked part of his lip all but disappeared into his mouth in consternation.

She was getting better at this, but finding ways to be mean was turning out to be slightly less satisfying than she'd expected.

Although her near-death experience had somewhat dampened the good mood her run had put her in, Sydney found that the day went by much more pleasantly and less stressfully than the previous. She was no longer worried about what was going on in her apartment; if anything, Sark's strong self-preservation instincts would keep him in line and well-behaved during the hours she was at work. She no longer feared that she'd come home to a house full of assassins… at least not until the project had been completed. After that, she assumed all bets would be off.

The man they'd captured the day before proved to be just as useful a prisoner as Sark had promised. He had provided Sydney's father with all kinds of useful information on The Covenant's other funding resources, and on some of its contracts with various arms dealers.

All in all, by the time she returned home, Sydney was feeling vastly less hostile than she'd been the evening before. She opened the door again to a seemingly empty apartment. "It's me," she announced to the air, and then Sark and his gun popped out from a corner of the hallway this time. He barely made eye contact before plopping on the couch and picking up his book from where he'd left it on the coffee table.

"What have you been up to today?" Sydney asked, trying to keep her tone light, in an effort to be more civil after the previous night and morning's blow-out. Sark didn't reply. Without raising his gaze, he pointed to a corner of the bookshelf where the first two Harry Potter books lay. He was currently reading the third installment.

"Liking it so far?" she asked.

"Evidently," was the terse reply.

Sydney bristled at his stand-offishness, but part of her realized how unfair she was being. She'd done her best to make it clear how little she enjoyed his company; why should she now be pissy that he was trying to stay out of her way? She reasoned herself into calm and went to throw her socks into the hamper. What she saw instantly undid whatever resigned civility she'd been considering.

"Sark," she yelled, stomping back to the living room and thrusting his dress shirts in his face. "What are these doing in my hamper? You don't seriously expect me to do your laundry."

He looked up from his book, seemingly oblivious to her anger. "Of course not. I simply thought you could add my things to the pile you send to your laundry service."

"God, you are such a snot. This is probably going to come as a shock, but I actually do my own laundry."

"How do you get your shirts pressed, then?" he asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity.

"I buy those wrinkle-free ones from Brooks Brothers," Sydney explained.

Sark wrinkled his nose. "I've seen those. The quality of the cotton is inferior."

"Then I suggest you learn how to iron. And wash. You know, since you're just sitting here all day, it wouldn't kill you to help me out around the house. Earn your keep."

Sark stared at her, expressionless. After a beat, he replied, "Or I could give you money to have them cleaned. You have only to drop the bag off with the doorman downstairs."

Sydney threw a nearby apple at his head in frustration. He ducked it elegantly. She was sick of losing every argument to the brat. "Fine. I'll give you the bill. Ugh, you are so annoying, though. Remind me why I haven't killed you yet?"

He looked up at her, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. "I've always assumed it was because of my beaux yeux." He blinked, twice. Not a wink, not a batting of the eyelashes—just two slow, eerily sensual closings of those giant blue saucers as he gazed at her with an intensity that left her highly unnerved. Was he flirting with her, or did he just have really bad social skills?

"Really?" she managed to stammer. "'Cause, that's not it at all."

He raised an eyebrow, as if to question her, and looked so unconvinced that she started to wonder exactly how convinced _she_ was. He did have beautiful eyes, though… for a sociopath.

Feeling weird, she stormed off towards the bedroom and heard Sark call after her, "I'm about to heat up something for dinner. Shall I warm a piece of lasagna for you, as well?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure." As she changed into house clothes, it occurred to her that maybe this was Sark's subtle way of making an effort, of doing as she'd just asked him to.

The microwave clock was ticking down by the time she re-emerged, and Sark was getting out forks and knives and setting them on the kitchen island.

Still restrained, he opened with, "So, how are things going with the captive I handed you? Has he provided the requisite intel?"

Ah, work. Sydney was relived. It was a nice, safe subject, and it got them through dinner. They were able to discuss The Covenant, take into account the things Sydney and the CIA had learned, and go through Sark's plans for their next steps (no more notes on the front door, Sydney requested). She was careful to keep any information that wasn't due to Sark's help to herself; after the stunt her mother had pulled, giving herself up to the CIA in order to worm her way into everyone's trust and secrets, she wasn't about to let Sark play her the same way.

"Okay, got it," she said, once they'd gone over their strategy for the rest of the week.

"With so many 'breakthroughs', your friends will hail your brilliance even more than they already do."

"It won't be my brilliance, though. It won't even be yours. This is just stuff you happen to know. I feel dirty, taking credit for ideas that aren't mine. I hate that this is the only way to do this." She got up and started packing the empty plates into the dishwasher before heading to the couch and slumping down. "When we took down the Alliance, I thought I'd be done with lying, with working with the enemy, but here I am again."

Sark sat down next to her. "It isn't precisely the same. Now that I no longer am affiliated with an organization you are working against, I'm hardly an enemy. Also, before, you were lying at SD-6 and lying at home to your friends. At least in this case, you are being mostly truthful at work, and you can come home to be truthful with me."

Sydney frowned. His statement was logical, but it didn't feel emotionally true. And way he said it made it sound as though 'coming home to him' was sort of domestic routine to be cherished, and it grated, bringing back the desire to stick it to him that she'd been trying to keep in check. "Coming home to you is a thousand times worse than lying to Francie and Will ever was. And I'm still lying to my friends at work. Lying about you by omission."

"They aren't friends," he retorted. "They are colleagues. There's a difference."

"Maybe to you, but they're friends to me. You wouldn't understand," she said, feeling herself start to get as heated as she'd been on the previous nights. "You've never had friends. You're too much of a psycho bastard. You'd probably end up—"

Sydney was so caught up in her tirade that she almost missed Sark coming to lean right over her, stretching his hand out to rest on the arm of the sofa, and effectively trapping her in her seat. She froze, and before she had a chance to process that this was _actually happening_, his lips were pressed against hers. It was when he nuzzled his nose against her own that Sydney sprang into action. She grabbed his other arm and twisted it behind his back, using it as leverage to force his body downwards so that his head was buried in the far couch cushion. She kept both of his arms in a tight grasp and reached over to keep his head down with her other hand.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Resolving our unresolved sexual tension," was the muffled reply.

"Our... Our _what?_"

Sark fought against the pressure of her hand to turn his head so that he could be heard. The sight of his profile filled Sydney with rage, and his words were even more insulting.

"Your hostility towards me is so out of countenance with anything I have ever done to you. The only explanation I have been able to come up with is that you feel some latent attraction to me that seeps through your efforts at repression in the form of aggression. I was endeavoring to help you deal with it."

"Bullshit. I've got loads of reasons for my behavior that have nothing to do with an attraction I don't feel. You've done everything to me. You've ruined everything."

"How, exactly?"

"You've threatened my life time and time again."

He had the gall to laugh at her, even with his face smushed against the couch. "If I'd really meant to harm you, you wouldn't be alive right now. Irina always gave me strict instructions to put on a show, but to never inflict serious lasting injuries on you."

This was probably true, but Sydney was on a roll, and she had another reason ready to summon. "You've always gotten in the way of my missions."

"Only the ones concerning Rambaldi, and, let's be honest. He means just as little to you as he does to me. What do you care about those missions?"

"You… you got to spend time with my mother." Sydney blinked back tears. She _would not_ cry in front of him. As she actually admitted it to him, to herself, she realized that she was finally getting at the core of why she hated him so much. Her hand wavered on the back of his head and finally let go.

Picking himself up and rubbing his elbow where she had twisted it, he answered, "I have offered multiple times to share what I know about her with you, but you have refused. And again, _she_ recruited _me_. I cannot be held responsible for taking her away from you. That was her own doing."

The only way to keep from crying was to go for the last one. "If you hadn't had Francie killed, which led to Will having to leave, I'd still have friends."

"I can't be both a lowly lackey _and_ the evil mastermind bent on destroying your life, Sydney," Sark sighed.

"So which are you?"

"Neither. If it hadn't been me, the assignment would have been given to someone else. The sooner you stop blaming me for everything, the happier you'll be. And now, would you like some wine?" he asked, getting up momentarily to pour himself another glass.

"No, I would not."

Sark shrugged. "Suit yourself, but it's your loss, because this is surprisingly excellent, for only $40 a bottle."

Sydney twitched in anger as she watched him sip. She couldn't believe his gall. She couldn't believe how he'd somehow managed to wriggle out of the blame she knew that he deserved, even though right now, after his very good responses, she was feeling shaky on her logic. Summoning the last of her authoritative dignity, she said, "If you ever try to kiss me again, I will end you. Is that understood?"

"Yes," he hissed, and then smiled to himself, licking his lips thoughtfully. "At any rate, it was worth a shot."

Sydney smacked him, _hard_, across the face. However, whatever satisfaction she might have gained was squandered when he actually looked more turned on by that than he'd looked after the kissing.

Kinky bastard.

"I'm going to bed." Sydney got up, and was surprised, after everything that had just happened, to feel Sark's hand on her arm, holding her back.

"It's still early," he protested. "I promise not to make any more advances, but I still don't think my presence should force you to retire before you're ready."

"What do you care?" she snapped, knowing he was right, but having no idea how they could make this work. For the first time, she felt so tired that she started considering just giving into the blackmail and letting him wreck her life. She wasn't even sure what there was left to wreck. Still trapped in a spy's life, no friends, working with her ex and his new wife, having her mother as an enemy… Sydney's life was already too complicated without having to deal with a home life that consisted of being shot at, kissed against her wishes, and now appealed to, all by this weirdly fascinating little beast who, every so often, acted like he might be a human being. Times like now, when he was looking at her without his mask of insufferable smugness.

Sark was employing not his usual veneer of cool conviction, but a new tone, one that sounded just as tired and real as Sydney felt. "As I've been trying to impress upon you, Sydney, I am not a monster and I am not trying to make your life difficult." Then through clenched teeth he added, softly, "You do a good enough job of that on your own."

He tugged a few more times at her arm until she let him lead the two of them back to the couch. "This isn't working, Sark."

"I am willing to try any method of cohabitation you decide to try, but so far, you have been unable to stick to any one. We don't have to be friends, but this constant battle is pointless and destructive. If you would only put the past behind you, I think you'd find me easy enough to put up with, and not the sociopath you've convinced yourself I am. Just as if you let yourself calm down around me, I might be able to see past the peevish, self-righteous harpy you've been presenting to me every day."

"Harpy?" Despite herself, despite everything, she had to marvel at his vocabulary. "I haven't been a harpy."

He simply cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, as is to say, 'Really?' Sydney giggled. She had been acting like a harpy. It was immature and unproductive, too. The idea of doing this for more evenings left her exhausted, so something had to give. She tentatively held out her hand. "Truce?"

He shook it firmly, looking genuinely relieved. "Truce."

They let go of one another's hands and sat back on the couch. Sydney glanced at the clock; it was definitely too early for bed.

"So now what?" Sark asked.

Sydney reached over to the coffee table and grabbed the television remote. "Let's see what's on."

He smiled. "Excellent."

It wasn't perfect, and she still snapped at him a little during the commercial breaks or when he made an insufferably snotty comment, but overall, she thought, it might work out. Perhaps the little thrashing she'd given him had done her some good. She felt less tense. And no, the kissing had absolutely nothing to do with it. The tension she'd felt was 100% anger-related. She just hoped he was as aware of that fact as she was.


	4. Chapter 4

The chartered flights Sydney usually took for missions never had flight attendants. The pilot switched on and off the lights after take-off and before landing. She had trained herself to wake up when the lights in the cabin came on. Tonight, she could see the LA skyline creeping closer as the plane sank in the sky.

Home.

Across the aisle, Vaughn was stirring. He'd always been a fidgety one first thing in the morning. Lauren reached over to rub his shoulder and help him wake up, just as Sydney had used to do.

Before they could catch her watching them, she turned to look out the window again.

After three days in Cambodia with the two of them, she was desperate to get away. Away from Lauren and Vaughn's barely-there, but still-undeniable signs of affection. Away from the sidelong glances all of them kept giving one another. Away from the all-encompassing awkwardness that had consumed every minute of this mission.

It had been so awful that she didn't even mind anymore that Sark would be at home. Anything—even the skinny, arrogant, black-mailing piece of shit hiding out in her house—was better than this.

Talk about depressing.

Two weeks had elapsed between their tentatively brokered truce and her departure for Cambodia. They'd danced around one another, finding common ground for small talk, staying out of one another's way, finding compatible TV shows to watch. She'd shared his wine; he'd eaten most of the birthday cake she'd brought home from an office party. They didn't fit, but at least they no longer exploded.

They'd been on their way to learning how to tolerate with each other without killing each other. She wouldn't say it was better than being alone in the house, but it was better than what they'd had before, and it was… interesting. Sydney had always relished a challenge, but for too many months, she'd gone home and flopped every night, both mentally and physically. Especially now that her heart was just slightly less into her work, at least now there was something to make her feel awake for more hours of the day. Being with Sark was like going for a run, but without the mind-clearing benefits.

She wondered how things would be now that she was back. She wondered if he'd still even be there.

Sydney turned the key in the door and let it stay for a moment before pushing it open. Taking a deep breath, she entered the apartment. "What a day," she said quietly to let him know it was safe; on their last night before her trip, they'd decided on code words to let him know she was alone and it was safe, and others to let him know to stay hidden.

She couldn't believe she and Sark had a system set up for _anything_.

"Hello," he replied, coming out of the coat closet and plopping into his usual couch cushion. Sydney noticed the remote for the radio lying beside him.

"Been listening to the radio?" she asked as she kicked off her heels.

"Yes. Did you know that there is a radio show on during rush hour called 'Your Ass In Traffic'? Only, they pronounce 'your' as 'yo'. Because apparently, if you are listening to the program, odds are your ass is in traffic."

Apparently, he was also trying to continue on the more positive note they'd left things on. Sydney giggled at the randomness of his non-sequitor. It was the first time she'd ever found his accent hilarious, rather than annoying.

"Yeah, I used to listen to it sometimes… when I was in traffic, obviously. Not recently, though. I leave the office too late."

"I highly enjoyed it."

And with that, there was an awkward silence. They'd both opened up the market for pleasantries, but they still didn't know how far to wade in.

She dragged her bag with her to the bedroom and stopped, looking around her. Something was off. He'd tried, and he was good but… no one was that good.

"Sark?" she asked, affecting even tones. "Were you sleeping in my bed while I was gone?"

"It seemed a shame to let the bedroom go to waste," he called back lazily. "I assumed the injunction was for when you were in it. Did you mean for it to extend to when I was left alone in the house?"

Sydney came stomping back out to the living room, but it was different from her stomps in those first few days: scarily more resigned. As she came to stand in front of him, hands akimbo, she wondered what that meant. He feigned innocence, looking yet again like a choir boy. Damn him.

"You knew that's what I meant."

He just smiled, too infuriating to be disarming. "I took it upon myself to change the linens for your return. You can rest easy knowing that we have not lain in the same sheets. I wouldn't dream of passing along my... I think American children call them 'cooties'?"

Sydney simply shook her head; he held her gaze in that eerie blue haze he was so good at leveling at her and unnerving her with. The stand-off, oddly devoid of real antagonism, lasted longer than should have been comfortable, and yet it wasn't uncomfortable.

Then she noticed that the huge box of books had been put on the shelf; he'd only been putting them up when he was finished reading. She noticed that all the dvds were unpacked, too. He must have finished with them while she was away. And now she also noticed that he looked twitchy and vaguely unsettled.

As bad as three days with Lauren and Vaughn had been, perhaps three days in solitary confinement—following close on the heels of two long years of it—had taken a similar toll on him. She didn't pity him, never that, but… it was interesting.

As if reading her mind, he slowly formed that lopsided grin that she was starting to learn meant that he was trying to be genuine, even though after a lifetime of being a murderous bastard, he was out of practice. "It's good to have you back, Sydney."


	5. Chapter 5

As Sydney opened the refrigerator door, a yawn slipped out.

"Am I boring you?" Sark asked.

He looked up from where he sat at the kitchen bar stools, reading the latest copy of _The Economist_, to which he'd just gotten 'her' a subscription. She noted, vaguely, that he didn't really need to be sitting there. The couch would have made more sense, but as soon as she'd finished changing after work, he'd moved, even though he wasn't actually talking to her. He'd been doing that all week.

She ignored him. He knew full well why she was tired. Between jet-lag, staying up until 3am discussing the case with him, and then getting up at 7am to get to work, it was no wonder she was exhausted. Unlike him, she couldn't sleep the day away. They'd stayed up for the past couple of nights, strategizing, going over maps and notes and bios and aliases, all mixed in with the occasional quip and joke-just to make the work a little more bearable, she reminded herself. No one could talk business without a break, especially not business as complicated as this was proving to be.

The hard work was paying off, at least; everything was going swimmingly. The Covenant's lowest-ranking minions were starting to defect, due to the chaos erupting in the higher echelons. It was the beginning of the end. However, Sydney had been here before with SD-6. The beginning of the end wasn't necessarily the same thing as the final act.

Thank goodness it was Friday and she didn't have any trips planned. She could actually sleep. However, the prospect of a full weekend with Sark left her feeling not exactly nervous, but still apprehensive. A few hours a day was one thing, but she still wasn't convinced they could survive an entire weekend without shooting one another, especially since he seemed to have run out of books and dvds, too.

"I feel like making something tonight," she remarked, looking through the dwindling contents of the fridge. She didn't know if he intended to place another delivery order; she certainly wasn't going to pay for it, but she also wasn't going to ask him to buy more food. Their supplies were reaching a crisis point, though; and if she ate another frozen pizza or chicken finger, she was going to vomit.

"I thought one of the ground rules for this arrangement was that you wouldn't cook for me."

Sydney winced. He'd caught her. In an attempt to make up for her careless lapse in detachment, she replied, "I'll be cooking for myself. Whether or not you have some is none of my business."

He put down the magazine and now regarded her with full attention, as though a thought had occurred to him for the first time. "_Do_ you cook?"

"Yes. I'm actually not too bad at it, either."

He simply raised an eyebrow at her and resumed reading his magazine. He didn't have to say a word in order to silently convey, 'We'll see.'

She shook her head in annoyance, but instead of a smartly timed comeback to his non-comment, another yawn slipped out, so she let it go. There was enough in the fridge to cobble together her signature salad. She started washing vegetables, bopping her head to the music in the background. It was easy enough to tune Sark out when she wanted to; he'd gotten a lot better at figuring out when she wanted some quiet time. In that way, he was turning out to be less inconsiderate than she'd first assumed.

That didn't make him a prince or anything, though. Just someone with a keen sense of self-preservation.

He continued to read while she chopped and grilled, getting up only when she was close to done to quietly set the table for the two of them. As she was dishing portions out he nonchalantly remarked, "You forgot the olives. You'll locate them at the back of the refrigerator, on the second shelf."

Sydney froze. He was right, but… "How do you know olives go in this?"

"It's your mother's favorite quick meal. I assumed she taught you how to make it."

Sydney pretended not to care, not to be hurt and confused, as she put the bowl down and went to get the olives. This was her _father's_ favorite quick meal, the only non-spy thing he'd ever shown her how to do, long ago when she was a little girl, long before this life was ever a question.

Now it was being tainted, not just by her mother's association with it, but by Sark and the disturbing connection he had to her.

He took a seat at the table and watched as she tossed in the final ingredient. After crunching wordlessly for a few minutes, he asked, "Exactly how long do you intend to torture yourself before finally asking me?"

"Ask you about my mother? Fat chance. I'm not going to give you a chance to lord it over me."

"I thought you had realized by now that I _am_ capable of speaking without condescension," he replied, sounding ridiculously condescending. "And my relationship with your mother is hardly something I consider worth 'lording over'."

"Why not?"

"A woman who molded me into a life that leaves me sadly unpopular in most polite circles? A woman who left me to rot in a CIA prison for two years? Is hardly a woman worth romanticizing. The only reason you do is because she left before you became a bratty teenager who slammed doors in her face."

Sydney considered his thesis while in mid-chew. The bitterness in his voice was not quite palpable-this was still Sark she was dealing with-but it was there, creeping in on the edges of the vowels, sitting far back in the darkness that kept his too-light eyes from being transparent. Irina had made this, made him.

Something that wasn't quite a realization washed over her, not enough to make her empathize with him or pity him, but enough to drop the aggression, at least for now.

Apparently the only thing worse than not have a mother, was having hers.

"Did _you_ ever slam the door in her face?" she asked jokingly, to ease the tension. She tried to picture a bratty teenage Sark. It wasn't hard; he couldn't have been much brattier as a teenager than he was currently.

This didn't get a smile, but it did get a softening of his features. He knew what she was doing.

"Once."

"What happened?"

"She opened it again, grabbed my hand, and then slammed the door on it. Afterwards, she used the incident as a reason to give me a lesson in how to self-treat broken bones."

When Sydney found herself speechless, for almost the first time ever with him, he continued softly, "Nurture was never part of our arrangement." Then, his features hardened, and he said, "So, how goes the case?"

Sydney took the hint, and changed the subject. She'd said she didn't want to know; and he didn't want to tell.

The rest of evening was awkward, not with the normal kind of awkwardness two people with a lot of bad blood between them usually feel, but more with the kind of awkwardness that stems from two people finally having chipped away a bit at the wall that's sustained the illusion that they live in different worlds. Sydney finally figured out why she'd put off asking Sark about her mother for so long. It wasn't because of jealousy; it wasn't even because she dreaded him lording it over her. It was because she was scared of exactly this: not of intimacy, not of something shared-the fact that he knew Irina and she didn't obviated that possibility-but rather any kind of connection at all beyond work.

Even worse was a nagging thought: whom had she been kidding? The wall had been getting chipped at every day. Just a few minutes ago, she'd forgotten all about her resolution not to cook for him. Who knew how many other lapses she'd been making, that he simply hadn't bothered to call her out on?

Sydney had no idea how he was feeling about it. Most of their conversations since brokering their domestic truce had revolved around getting the job done. In that way he remained the same as he had ever been: inscrutable, professional, efficient. But something else had been added into the mix. She didn't know what it was exactly, but she'd long ago learned a great fact of the universe: that it was possible to maintain the same impression of _anyone_ after having seen them in their jammies, fast asleep and drooling on throw pillows.

She wondered what humiliatingly similar impressions he was forming of her. If he still considered her a harpy. She didn't actually know whether or not she cared (hitherto, the answer had been a definite 'absolutely not', so the fact that it was now a question was worrying).

"What are you doing for the weekend?" he asked before bedtime, conversational, not as a prompt to talk about work. She (scarily) could tell the difference now.

"I don't have any plans. You?" she replied, knowing full well the answer was 'nothing'.

But he surprised her. "The woman in the building across the courtyard has scheduled a date tomorrow night with her paramour. From the email address of a friend of a friend, I told husband that there will be a football party at that address tomorrow. I intend to watch the drama unfold at about 5pm tomorrow. You have an excellent pair of binoculars in the front closet."

"I didn't know you were such a stickler about marital vows."

"I'm not. But it's better than television. It might almost be as good as the theatre."

This sounded dangerous. The restlessness she'd first noticed upon her return from Cambodia had only worsened. A stir-crazy Sark was a Sark who might-unlikely, but still a possibility-make a mistake.

"We should make another book order tomorrow," she suggested.

"I would like that. We'll also need more groceries." He smiled at her, the genuine, lop-sided, (almost) endearing smile he knew better than to let almost anyone see; no one could possibly take him seriously looking like that, and without being taken seriously, Sark would have nothing. Sydney knew it had only come out because they'd been chipping at that wall (she had a feeling Sark knew, too, for the smile was suppressed almost as soon as it had been revealed).

"I'll see you in the morning."

Sark finished 'making' the couch, tucked in all the sheets, scanned the room, and crawled between his sheets. "Goodnight, Sydney."

Sydney switched off the light and left the room.

A few hours later, she was awoken by a loud crash of breaking glass and the heavy thump of a body. She was up like a shot, grabbing the gun on the night table. A million possibilities ran through her mind, but one was obvious. Someone had found out. Someone was here for him. It sounded like they'd accomplished their job, too, because she could hear incoherent moaning in Sark's unmistakable tones. She crept down the hallway, keeping her gun pointed in any direction where assassins were likely to still be hiding.

Silence reigned, and she finally decided to switch on the lights and see what she was up against.

Instead, she saw only Sark, sprawled and bloody and twitching in the part of the room where there had previously been a coffee table. Large chunks of glass surrounded him, equally bloody. Nothing else was disturbed. It didn't seem as though anyone had ever been there.

"What the hell, Sark?" she asked, not lowering her gun.

He didn't get up. "What happened?" he asked. That muffled morning voice she'd heard on the day when he'd sleepily almost shot her was back.

"You know better than I do. Who attacked you?"

"Attacked?" He sat up, pressing his hand on the floor, and getting a new gash to his wrist for his trouble. "Shit, fuck that hurt."

It was the first time she'd ever heard him use anything but the politest language.

Sydney grabbed two pairs of slippers from the closet and tossed them to him, along with a few dish towels. "Come on. The sooner you get out of that mess, the better."

"I believe I had a nightmare," he said, almost in disbelief, as he pushed himself to a standing position.

She reached out for his elbow to help him stand up. He put on her fluffy white slippers and swore again.

"You just can't help but destroy things, can you? What did my poor table ever do to you?" Sydney asked as she helped him to the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet seat.

If it weren't all so bloody and horrible, she would have laughed. He was so ridiculous like this, all muzzy-headed and stupid with sleep. Thankfully, this time he didn't have a gun, and was only a danger to himself. And her ex-coffee table.

"My deepest apologies, Sydney," he slurred, exhibiting that odd and seemingly unconscious concerned trait that was becoming a trademark of sleepy Sark. "I… I will pay…"

"Yes, you will. I'll make sure of that," she assured him. "I really liked that table. Hold still for a minute." She ran to the linen closet and got out all of her first aid supplies. She didn't know why she was doing this, why she should bother helping him. She told herself that she couldn't let him die, not now when they were making such progress with the Covenant. She told herself it was better than having him bleed all over her floor; those were hard stains to get out.

When she returned, Sark's eyes were still half-lidded with sleep and his shoulders were slumped in pain, but he'd taken his shirt off and rolled up his pant legs, and was inspecting his wounds in the mirror. The vast amount of pallid skin and wiry muscle on display unnerved her; they'd been living together, but had managed not to catch one another in anything close to a state of undress. She noted, despite herself, that he was less skinny than she'd imagined; it was the idea that she'd had any imaginings of him without a shirt on that disturbed her the most. She collected herself and pushed him to sit on the toilet seat.

"What were you dreaming about?" she asked.

"I don't want to talk about it." The business-like snap and impatience were returning to his voice. When she began to press against his head wound with hydrogen peroxide, he steeled himself, bearing the sting without reaction, like the hardened torture victim she knew he wasn't.

His body may have been unresponsive, but he still had a mouth on him. Always.

Preying on what had, until very recently, been a sure-fire way to get to leave him alone, he said, "You don't need to sully your hands in treating me. I can take care of this myself."

Sydney knew him well enough by now, whether she wanted to or not, to see right through his attempts to cover up his embarrassment with obnoxiousness. "No, you can't. Just keep still. It's fine."

Sark was peevish and cringing under her ministrations, but calmed down enough to bear it.

"So, what kind of move _was_ that? You took out a whole table," she remarked as she slathered him with ointment and bandages.

"How should I know? I was asleep at the time. I thought I was battling a giant squid," he mumbled.

"A squid?"

Just as she had done earlier in the evening, Sark remembered himself, remembered his personal injunctions and saw how he was failing in keeping her at bay. At least she wasn't the only one. "Never mind," he snapped.

She had him cleaned up and bandaged in a few minutes. He looked like a leper, or a mummy, bits of white tape stuck at random all over his body.

"Okay, there you go. You should be fine in a couple of days. Back to bed."

She walked with him back to the living room. Blood and splintered wood and giant jagged pieces of glass greeted them.

He looked at her plaintively.

She sighed. Of course it had come to this.

"Fine. Come on."

He followed-not meekly, but also not with his usual confident swagger-at her heels to the bedroom.

Once by her nightstand, she turned to look at him. "Ground rules, take two. You steal more than your fair share of the sheets, you die. You snore, you die. You toss and turn and keep me up, you die. You touch me, you die. You pull your squid-fighting moves on me in your sleep, you die. Got it?"

He was awake enough now for the smirk to return. "Judging from the state of your table, I would wager that if the squid came back, you would be the one dead, not I. Shall I find a sword to lay in the center of the mattress, like Aladdin of old?"

She was too tired to deal with his references. "Just get in bed."

The corner of his mouth quirked just before opening.

"Don't even," she said, cutting him off before whatever it was could come out.

She watched him pat down the sheets, make sure everything was tucked, scan the room. Just the way she'd watched him do it a few hours before, and every night since he'd been there.

"You are scarily anal retentive."

"I prefer the word thorough."

Sydney crawled into the bed after him. It was a big one, and they were both fairly pretty compact people. Sark, to his credit, stayed on the extreme edge of his side of the bed.

"You know, if I didn't know how highly you valued your precious skin, I'd say you did this on purpose. You've been eyeing this bed since the minute you walked in this apartment."

"I swear to you, it was an accident."

Sitting up with her back against the headboard, she took him in for a minute. "You look like some poor Victorian orphan. You know, something out of Dickens, all pale and tragic with your bandages."

"Does that increase my attractiveness or detract from it?"

Sydney scowled. She hadn't meant for him to take her remark seriously. "Neither. You'd have to have some baseline attractiveness to increase or lessen. And you don't."

He actually almost looked wounded, which surprised her. "Why do you always respond like that? Logically, such statements don't make any sense. I may not be to your particular taste, but I'm hardly deformed. Why do you insist on pretending that I am?"

"Shut up," she ordered. But still, Sydney stopped to look at him. Sark really was so cute, objectively speaking, of course. He reminded her of a grown-up version of Tommy Kiminsky, her crush back in the seventh grade. The same kissable crooked lip. The adorable freckles. The giant blue eyes. The blond hair that had a mind of its own. But there was something that was too familiar about him-more than just his resemblance to Tommy-that gave her a strange feeling about taking the idea seriously. It wasn't about all the things he'd done-difficult as it was for her to set so many things aside-it was something else. Something Marshall had once babbled to her.

"_He and your mother are really close. You ever wonder if you're related? You know, like-"_

"_I know what you mean, Marshall. And the answer is no. It's not possible."_

She had no idea how old Sark was. The difference between two years younger and five years younger would make all the difference, but not really. No matter what, it wasn't possible. She knew it, not by fact, but by instincts that had never served her wrong. But, even icky possibilities aside…

Much as she'd never admit it to him, he was right that they had a lot in common-the same natural aptitudes that made them so good at what they did, the same way of picking apart a situation. Even more disturbing, he even had some of her mother's mannerisms. The same way of throwing her head back without breaking eye contact. The same way of keeping his face steely while his eyes saw right through you. They were the kinds of things that anyone who had spent years under her tutelage might have unconsciously started to ape.

No. No. Sydney tried not to think about it. But the problem was that if she stopped thinking about that-about all of that-she was left thinking about a good-looking guy who had way too much in common with her not to…

"Penny for your thoughts," Sark said softly, jolting Sydney out of her reverie. "And I consider it charity rather than a sale, as I have a fairly clear idea of what those thoughts are."

She pursed her lips and assumed steely hauteur. "Sark, don't let the fact that I'm letting you sleep here confuse you. Just because we're not at each others' throats anymore doesn't mean I like you." And then the truth slipped out before she could put a clamp on it. "And no matter what, it would still be entirely too Luke and Leia for my tastes."

"I…" he began confidently, but then broke off into a sputter. He'd clearly had a cleverly crafted rebuttal to her expected response on the tip of his tongue, but she'd managed to say something that threw him. "It's too… _what_?"

"Luke and Leia," she repeated.

"I fail to understand the reference or its meaning in our current conversation," he said icily. Damn the man; he really hated being confused. Sydney made a mental note to remember to do this again next time she wanted to shut him up, which would probably be about ten minutes from now.

"You know…" She stopped. "Wait a second. You're telling me you don't know who Luke and Leia are?"

He rubbed the top of his head thoughtfully. "I recognize the names as the main characters in Star Trek." He held up his hand and waggled his fingers ambiguously. Then, apparently having realized that the motion didn't come naturally, he fixed his concentration on his hand. Sydney watched as something almost robotic overtook his features, and in infinitely less time than it took her to understand what was going on, he had willed his fingers to snap into a perfect Vulcan salute. Then, just as scarily, the look of concentration was gone, replaced by a self-satisfied little smile.

Sydney was flabbergasted. Forget the unsettling roboticness she had sometimes noticed in herself and all subjects of Project Christmas. And forget the fact that Sark had just maybe, sort-of, expressed some kind of creepy interest in her while sitting, _invited_, in her bed. This was, surprisingly enough, _more_ monumental than that. "You've got to be kidding me. You honestly don't know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek?"

He groaned. "You say it like I've confused Mozart and Schoenberg. What does it matter? They're merely characters in a silly space show."

"Oh my god. I… I don't even know where to start with that. Sark, good-night," she stated with finality as she turned off the light. She couldn't talk to him anymore without serious risk of death by laughter.

"Good-night, Sydney," he replied, muffled. She could hear that he was more than a little confused as to where he'd gone wrong.

He couldn't possibly know, but after all of his failed attempts to charm or impress her, tonight, when he'd been at his most helplessly, pathetically _normal_ (though with Sark, apparently 'normal' was squid-killing)… tonight was the first time she'd felt the urge to pat him on the head.

…Or something.


	6. Chapter 6

Sydney awoke with the feeling that she'd had the strangest dream. She even remembered incoherent bits of it-squids and splinters and Star Wars and Sark first half-naked and then in her bed-but none of it made any sense as a whole. At any rate, when she rolled over, she found proof that it was indeed a fiction of her, obviously, deeply fucked-up subconscious. The other side of the bed was empty, sheets unrumpled and just as smooth as any other morning after a night of sleeping alone.

A dream.

It was only when she dragged herself out of bed and slumped lazily into the living room that her assumption was challenged. Sark was out there, tying the last of a series of giant black garbage bags, presumably full of the remnants of her ex-coffee table.

It all came rushing back.

"That's the last of it," he said, with his back to her, as though this was any old morning and that had been any old night. "Unfortunately, given that I am not supposed to be here, I'll have to trouble you to carry these downstairs yourself."

Sydney was still staring blearily at the neat row of trash bags set aside the wall of her impeccably tidy living room. Except for the presence of cleaning supplies on the counter and the bandages peeping out from underneath Sark's tee-shirt, there was no sign of the previous night's bloody struggle.

"How did you…?"

"You should know that I am adept enough at destroying evidence to be able to clean up my own mess. Quietly."

Sydney raised her eyebrows and shook her head. "Right."

He continued to clean, putting his bottles away and tossing some paper towels into the last trash bag.

"Eggs?" he asked, unusually chirpy.

"Um. Sure." Sydney was still recovering from too many unpleasant realizations at once to pay her rumbling stomach much attention. Not only had they slept together (in only the most technical sense), but today was also the first time they'd had a whole morning after. Before now, she'd always risen before him, dressed quietly, and slunk out of the apartment with a bagel between her teeth. There'd always been work or a flight to catch or _something_ to keep them safely apart for most of the day.

But now she had an unacceptably chirpy Sark to deal with.

"Sleep well?" he asked.

Instead of responding, she asked, "How are all your cuts?"

"I'll live." And then he added, in a perfect mockery of her voice, "Pity."

She winced, mostly because that particular comeback hadn't even occurred to her, hadn't in a while, she realized. "I wasn't actually going to say that, you know."

His back had been to her as he scrambled the eggs, but now he craned his neck around to look at her. Oddly, the expected self-satisfied smirk was nowhere to be seen. Sydney felt more naked under that gaze than she ever had, but Sark said nothing, turned back to his task and simply added cheese.

There was a painful silence, similar to the one that had overtaken them the night before, as they acknowledged their ebbing hostility and struggled to navigate the space between an agreed-upon DMZ and something closer to actual peace.

Or, at least that was what Sydney was struggling with. For all she knew, she could be totally wrong about what was going on in his brain; perhaps all Sark was thinking about was how much salt to put on the damn eggs. Or maybe he was still plotting a way to betray her and have her killed as soon as his purpose had been achieved.

"Do you do this every morning when I'm not here? Eggs?" she asked as she moved to start making the coffee.

"Usually."

This train of thought led Sydney to another question, one that somehow hadn't occurred to her before. "Is this what you do at home, too?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean your own home. When you're not invading mine. You've got to live somewhere, right?"

"Not necessarily."

"Everyone lives somewhere. Where do you go when you aren't out destroying lives?"

Sark dished the eggs onto plates and slid into his customary seat across from her. "I've spent the past four months in and out of various hotel rooms around the world as part of my work for the Covenant. Before that, I called my charming cell at the CIA home. So no, there have been no eggs."

"But before that. You must have had your own money. You must have had something."

"I slept wherever Irina told me to sleep. Thankfully, it was usually somewhere pleasantly expensive."

Quietly, they finished their eggs and washed up, all with a sense of dread at the prospect of a normal day hanging over them.

"Shall we go online and pick out some new furniture for you?" Sark asked, breaking the silence. "I'll pay for whatever I broke last night."

"_You're_ going to help me decorate? Yeah right."

"I'll confess I have been itching to do so ever since I got here."

"My dad picked out this stuff."

"Sydney, your father has many admirable qualities, but a keen sense of interior design is not among them."

She pursed her lips and shut the laptop she'd been about to open as punishment for daring to say anything about her dad.

"You've never even had your own place. Why the hell do you think you can play home-maker in mine? Anyway, it's not like you'll be here for long. What do you care?"

Sark stretched himself in the doorway. "Do _you_ anticipate being here for very long?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm asking you how long you intend to stay with the CIA. How long you intend to stay in a city where you have experienced so much pain. Wouldn't you like a fresh start somewhere new, doing something new?"

"Is this another one of your job propositions?"

Sark walked towards her, getting just a little too close into Sydney's personal space. She took a step back.

"Not a job proposition. More of a question from a concerned… party."

"I haven't thought that far out. Right now, I'm focused on getting rid of the Covenant, making sure nothing from my years of abduction can be used to hurt anyone else. After that… after that I'll deal with my own life."

Sark shrugged. "It might behoove you to start thinking about your own life a bit before allthat is accomplished."

"Why?"

He didn't have a chance to respond, because just then, Sydny's phone rang.

""Hey, Syd?" Vaughn's voice sounded nervous every single time he'd ever called her since her return. "There's been a break. We've been called in."

"Okay. I'll be there in an hour."

"Was that Agent Vaughn? I assume I'm being deprived of the pleasure of your company for the rest of the day."

"Since when has it been a pleasure?" she asked.

Sark had no reply.

So much for a free weekend.

Sydney spent the entire afternoon and evening holed up in the conference room. With just her and the guys (Lauren was, thankfully, engaged on another lead), it almost felt like the good old days when she'd loved this, lived for this. But only almost; the similarities between then and now only served to exacerbate the differences. Pieces of her life missing, Vaughn married, her mother come and now gone, revenge against Sloane no longer sanctioned, Diane dead… everyone dead.

God, she wanted out so badly she could almost smell it. As soon as this was over…

She knew she'd said that before, though.

As usual, she just so 'happened' to find the needle in the haystack of dead-end leads and potential time-wasters. Just so 'happened' to link two random pieces of information that, together, formed a clue.

And just in time, too. After six hours spent knee-deep in coffee and conspiracies, Weiss stretched and stood up. "Well, I'm beat. Time to get outta here."

"What about the case?" Sydney asked, gesturing at the pile of papers scattered between herself, Vaughn, Dixon, and Marshall. "We're only halfway done with the research."

Weiss shrugged. "I've stayed here until midnight for the last two cases. Plus, I've got a date."

Normally, Sydney would have congratulated him and peppered him with questions, but today, she was cranky. Her eyebrows moved into practically a tilde of disbelief. She'd stayed until midnight for the last _five_ cases. What was she now, some kind of indentured servant just because she didn't have a life? Given how little she wanted to still be working for the CIA anyway, this rankled. "Well, maybe I should call it a night, too," she wondered aloud, feeling rebellious for the first time in months.

"You can't leave, Syd," Vaughn pleaded. "Come on, this is Weiss's first date in forever. And it isn't like you have anyth-"

He stopped himself and turned pale in what could have been either fear or embarrassment, but it was too late. Something had snapped in Sydney. She could feel the vein she'd inherited from her father beginning to pop out of her forehead. How dare he… How dare any of them. The room went silent as everyone watched her coil, waiting for her to strike.

But instead, surprising no one more than herself, she laughed, for the craziest idea had just popped into her head. She decided that she'd gone completely and utterly insane for even _thinking_ such a thing. And given the way they were all looking at her, cackling to herself like a loon, they thought the same.

Instead of lashing out, Sydney daintily picked up her purse and left the room without a word. She could hear Vaughn's chair screeching and his voice sounding out a plaintive, "Syd…"

It struck her only when she reached the parking lot that she'd played out that scene in the kind of cold and detached way Sark would have done. Sydney was usually all fire and passion and fury, ready to hurl insults at short notice. However, revolting as was the idea that Sark was rubbing off on her in any way, Sydney had to admit that she'd gotten more of a rise out of all of them than her usual approach would have accomplished.

Noted.

The idea that had caused her to laugh and leave returned to her. She paused for a moment, turning it over in her mind. Well, she'd already done the unthinkable and left work early. She might as well go whole hog.

Having something to look forward to made the commute go by faster. She'd had forgotten what that felt like. In the past few months of misery, she'd lost sight of the fact that having an after-work social engagement was _normal_ and _good_ and _healthy_, even if the so-called "healthiness" of the concept was undercut by the fact that said plan involved voluntarily spending quality time with Sark.

When she entered the apartment, it took longer than usual for him to emerge from his hiding place.

"What's wrong?" Sark's disembodied voice asked just before he appeared in the hallway, gun in hand.

"Nothing's wrong. Can't a girl skip out at seven on a Saturday night?" she asked, heading to the bedroom to change.

"Not when said girl is Sydney Bristow," he called after her.

When she returned to the living room, clad in almost the same outfit of black scrubs and black tee-shirt Sark was wearing, he was sitting on the couch, looking… happy? Sydney could hardly believe it was because she was home, but there was no other explanation.

Suddenly, the awkwardness of her plan hit her again.

"Did you rent a movie?" Sark asked, pointing to the Blockbuster bag she'd thrown on the counter. No wonder he was looking pleased; he knew what was going on. At least that meant she wouldn't have to talk about the fact that she'd planned a nice evening for the two of them. They could just watch and not have to acknowledge the implications.

"Yeah. And we have some ice cream."

"I hope you got coffee. I hated that rum raisin you bought last time."

"Shut up, Sark. We have a long night of viewing pleasure ahead of us."

"I wait with baited breath," he said, with a pronounced exhale, the purposeful contradiction of which was not lost on Sydney.

"Is it finally over?" Sark asked blearily.

Somehow, over the course of the trilogy and a bottle of wine, Sydney had ended up stretched out on her stomach, taking up the entire length of the couch. Sark had considerately slid down to the floor, his back against the couch and his neck propped up along the curve of the leather. His slowly re-growing curls had kept bouncing dangerously close to her nose every time he passed her a Dorito from the bowl beside him. There was a fresh stain from where she'd overshot when refilling his wine glass from above.

"What, you didn't like it?" she asked as the triumphant closing score played.

"Of all the terribly written, worse directed, abysmally paced, derivative trite I have ever been forced to waste…" Sark looked at the clock. "…_Six hours_ of my life watching…"

"I've always said there's something wrong with you, and this just proves it. Everyone loves _Star Wars_."

"They introduced sodding _teddy bears_ in the final act as a blatant merchandizing stunt. It was insulting."

"Aw, the Ewoks are cute. And anyway, consider this part of your education in normalcy while you're here. Along with reading Harry Potter."

Sark was still watching at the scrolling credits and shaking his head, giving Sydney a headful of hair in the nose. "If liking this is normal…" He trailed off, and then began again, more thoughtfully, "Now that I have the proper context, if I may return to your remark from last night… Given the developments in the film, I see that you were intimating that you think of me as a brother? While I appreciate the friendly sentiment, given what I know of your family, I'm not sure whether I should feel flattered or frightened."

Sydney stared at the back of his head, resolved to end the matter once and for all. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-six."

Only three years younger. She'd known it was impossible, but still; it was a relief to have final confirmation. Her happy sigh told him everything that was running through her head. He swiveled his body around on the floor, knees curled into his chest and his nose a disconcerting six inches away from hers.

"You seriously thought you and I…?" He laughed in her face. "Sydney, I know my sense of humour runs a little black, but do you really think I am capable of making all the innuendoes I've made towards you over the years if there had been any possibility, any at all…?"

"I have no idea what you're capable of. And frankly, I'd be a little scared to find out."

"I assure you, no. It is perfectly logical of you to wonder, though. The thought occurred to me, as well, years ago. But I ran my own tests. A loose strand of hair Irina left on an airplane seat, a secret side project with Dr. Markovich to test our DNA. There was no match. You can rest assured. You are no more related to me than you are to Michael Vaughn."

"Well, you've got to see why I wondered. You already are kind of the insufferable little brother I've always wanted dead. It'd be just my luck to actually _have_ you be my little brother."

But even while she bantered with him, Sydney wondered why he'd chosen Vaughn, of all people, for the comparison, why he'd mentioned the innuendoes (innuendoes she'd always taken as 100% professionally-oriented until this new explanation possibly suggested otherwise).

Sydney decided he was just trying to mess with her. She should put it out of her mind.

"Imagine the adorable childhood we could have shared," he continued. "You trying to poison me in the bath. Me convincing Jack to ground you for some imaginary offense."

"He would never have believed you over me."

"You underestimate the almost saccharine angelic quality of my looks as a child. The nuns let me get away with murder."

"I hope not literally."

Sark didn't pick up on Sydney's attempt to change the subject. He grew serious, almost quietly desperate, which was weird. "I wouldn't have this pick-axe scar on my leg. You probably wouldn't have that scar on your belly."

Sydney's hands went reflexively to her stomach. "You had nothing to do with that. You were locked up."

"No, but in this alternate universe, I probably would have been free, probably would have moved heaven and earth to save my big sister." His voice caught, a little too earnest for his own tastes, apparently. He shook his head, and the smirk was back. "Happily, all that is a fiction. We are at liberty to kill one another without remorse. That said, I will always maintain that we would have made an excellent team, you and I, if only we'd started out on the same side, shared the same training. Blood relations would be superfluous."

Not this again. "Sark. Stop."

It was the least obnoxious she'd ever been in refusing him. But the thing is, for the first time ever, she maybe, sort-of, kind of, saw what he was talking about. Sydney rationalized to herself that this new reaction on her part was a result of it not being a real offer, just a wistful resignation to what would never be.

"One day, you will see reason."

Or not.

"It's after 1," Sydney said, changing the subject. They'd argued this too many times; now that they were actually working together, and given how exhausted she was in general, she feared she'd accidentally slip and say yes. "It's pretty late."

Relentless, Sark hugged himself closer, both to himself and to her, rocking on his skinny bottom, and refusing to break eye contact. "You have nowhere to be tomorrow. Neither do I."

It was an invitation, but for what, Sydney didn't know-didn't want to know. But he sounded sad. That worry she'd had the night before, about him getting dangerously stir-crazy, came back. She remembered something.

"Hey, how'd your stalking go? You know, the people across the street whose lives you decided to ruin today, just for shits and giggles."

Sark frowned at the reminder. "He never came. Nothing happened. Nothing at all." He drew invisible patterns in the rug. "It's so late that I'm sure if we went outside now no one would-"

"In your dreams. I am _not_ letting you go outside. Who knows who might see you?"

"Are you worried I'll be assassinated?"

"No, I'm worried _I'll_ get arrested," she snapped, but was aware that he was right; her first thought had been of him getting shot by invisible snipers. "And by the way, people like you don't get assassinated. They just get shot."

"You have such a wonderful talent for reminding one so reassuringly of his place in the world."

Sydney chuckled despite herself, and he smiled-the nice, little-boy-lost one, not the smug one-when he saw how well his little joke had gone over.

This was becoming a real problem. All of it. They… they were actually almost having some kind of moment. She could tell he was reading her mind, hearing all the things she refused to admit. She only wished she could read his just as easily, or rather, that she wasn't so scared of what she might find there.

"Unfortunately, I do have somewhere to be tomorrow," she said, putting the clamp on every dangerous path of conversation. "They're sending me to Moscow in the morning. So much for a weekend."

"Dmitri Solheznin?"

"How did you know?"

"Our previous missions have led us to a place that I expected would find him next on our list." Sark stood up.

"What do you know about him?"

"He's ruthless. Humourless. Likes only two things in this world: horse racing and Puccini. I once watched him kill a little girl with a glass bottle simply because she was begging on the same block he happened to be walking on. I knew we would come to this, but I hoped they'd send someone other than you."

"Why?"

"My intel can only get you so far with him. You'll be on your own. He's a madman. I don't have any advice to give other than to be careful."

"I can handle myself," Sydney asserted, for the millionth time.

"I know. It's just that I'd hate to lose my most valuable asset."

"You're so sweet."

"Oh, go on," he said, forcing a smirk. He'd never had to force it before. That's what made Sydney finally get it. Just like Sydney had a moment ago, Sark seemed to catch himself giving too much away, and had quickly tried to deflect.

This game was so exhausting.

"You're actually concerned, aren't you?" she asked.

"Of course not."

"Yes you are. You're worried something will happen to me."

"Never," he continued to protest, but Sydney pressed.

"You think this guy is worse than usual, that I'll actually end up dead this time."

"Or perhaps you'll kill one another. Two adversaries out with one shot," he said through gritted teeth, and Sydney knew she'd cornered him.

"You blackmailed me into working with you, remember? Or are you telling me you actually care what happens to me?"

He stared blankly at her, unreadable. "If you don't stop, I'll have no choice but to kiss you again."

"Not if you want to sleep in my bed tonight," she joked, and then winced, for she'd simultaneously eased and increased the tension she wished wasn't there.

"You do realize how strange that sounds. We're a funny pair, Sydney Bristow."

Looking into his eyes, Sydney felt the full weight of her exhaustion finally fall. _Yes, yes we are,_ she found herself thinking. It was time to get up before… she didn't know what, but the universe was commanding her to get up, put more distance between their faces, _right now_, or else. Easing herself into a standing position, she reached out her arm.

"Come on. My flight's pretty early tomorrow morning. Time for bed."

"Yes, ma'am." Sark grabbed her arm and helped himself up.

Sydney rolled her eyes.

Within a few minutes, Sydney found herself looking up at Sark as he lifted the sheets and crawled in next to her, a few feet away.

Watching him, she asked, "Do you really think I'm in serious danger? I mean, more than usually?"

He looked at her, and then said, with perfect seriousness, "Come back you will. Always you do."

There was a pause as she processed what he was doing, and then Sydney burst out laughing, had to roll onto her back to accommodate her heaving peals. It was as genuine as he was capable of, she could tell. And it actually filled her with some sort of bizarre encouragement.

"I knew you liked it!"

"Mockery does not always indicate fondness, at least not in this case. Your wise mentor figure sounded suspiciously like a Muppet."

"You're actually right. I once heard the same guy does the voice for Miss Piggy," she said, just before switching off the lights.

"I'm always right," was his sleepy reply, muffled almost into inaudibility by his pillow.

Sydney could tell the exact moment when he conked out; Sark turned out to be one of those people who full-body twitch just as they switch over into sleep.

She spent the next two hours listening to him breathe, her mind running a thousand miles a minute the entire time.


	7. Chapter 7

Sydney nuzzled her face between her father's arm and his torso. Jack stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed and let her burrow in even further. They hadn't done this in longer than she could remember. Maybe not since she was a little girl, before her mother left. It wasn't an intimacy she (or he, really) generally allowed, but today, under today's circumstances, she thought both of them could make an exception. She needed to hide her eyes. Vaughn was looking at her from across the aisle, looking at her the same way he'd looked at her for three days across the dank cell where they'd been kept, bound and gagged in chairs facing one another. They couldn't talk, they couldn't touch. All they'd had to look at were one another's eyes, and she couldn't bear the sight of his anymore.

As soon as her face was hidden, Vaughn took the hint.

"I'm gonna go stretch out. Hopefully get some sleep," she heard his voice say. Jack's body moved around her head as he nodded in agreement. She heard Vaughn stand up and go, presumably, to some other part of the jet.

"How is your leg?" Jack asked, and she knew it was his way of asking her more generally about her well-being, about the non-physical things that hurt far worse than a leg that had been left dislocated for almost 48 hours.

"It's fine, dad. Don't worry about it."

She didn't mind her father asking her questions—in fact, at this moment, she loved him more than she'd ever loved anyone—but she wasn't in the mood to talk. More than anything, she wanted to see nothing, to hear nothing, to be alone in her own head. Vaughn's relentless and invasive eyes had sapped her more than the torture and the damp and the pain had sapped her.

Not-so-surprisingly, the first thing that came into her head now that she was free of Vaughn, was Sark. He'd told her this mission would be tough. He'd given her all the information he could to help her survive.

Or had he? She'd gotten out of there alive, but the niggling suspicion lingered. She'd been trained to expect double-crosses, to jump first to the conclusion that things were more complicated than they seemed. Could there have been some ulterior motive in sending her to that awful place? Could there have been some other benefit to him?

But then the disk she had hidden in her bra poked her and she decided, no, things were as they appeared. The disk she'd swiped even while Dixon and her father had been spearheading her escape. The disk Sark had told her in advance that they needed in order to be ready for the next mission, but which the CIA couldn't know about. "In their overly earnest, overly literal, process-driven enthusiasm, the CIA would do exactly the opposite use of what is needed," Sark had said.

And knowing the CIA, she'd known he was right.

But still, it was the first fully treasonous act she'd committed for him, for this partnership. Before, she'd been helping the CIA, just handing over information that Sark had fed her. Not a huge moral dilemma in that. But this was different. This was withholding information.

Just then, her father tightened his grip on her. But it was when he spoke that Sydney's guilt exploded.

"How did you know about the air ducts?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"The air ducts we used in our escape. Dixon's intel said that the right passage would lead outside, but you insisted upon taking the left turn."

Sydney was glad he couldn't see her face. She hated lying to him, and then told herself that he'd lied to her a million times, for the same reasons: because he had a larger plan in play, because she wouldn't understand, blah blah blah. Remembering this didn't make it better, but it helped her choke the lie out.

"Just instinct, I guess."

It killed her to hear him chuckle in satisfaction. "I'm glad I listened to you."

"Thanks."

"I'm sorry this happened. You were… Recently, I'd noticed that you were doing better."

At this, Sydney picked up her head out of curiosity. "What do you mean?"

"You've seemed more engaged, more alert, more focused. Less fixated on the past, less fixated on…" He lowered his voice, and Sydney glanced behind their seats. Vaughn was out of earshot, at the far end of the plane. She looked back at her father. He nodded, didn't need to finish the sentence.

"I know I've been traveling a lot recently, but in the few moments I've been able to see you, you've seemed happier than you've been since your return," he concluded. "I fear the past three days will prove to be a step backwards."

Sydney shook her head in disbelief. Her father was actually telling her that getting along with Sark was making her a happier person. That's what it had to be. It's the only thing that had changed. Plus, this was her father. He was the most observant person she knew, especially when it came to her. He was always right.

That's why she'd been so relieved that he'd been on the road so much in recent weeks. If anyone could figure out her secret, it was him. She hoped his traveling would continue until this project was done. Even though she knew she was doing this because she had to, and because it really _was_ helping, should couldn't bear the idea that he'd ever look at her like a traitor, as her mother's daughter.

"I'll be okay," she said.

"I want you to be, Sydney. You know I'm willing to go to any lengths to ensure that."

She snuggled into him even more. They sat like that for another hour, and at some point, Sydney drifted off into sleep.

The debrief was a bitch. She was taken directly from the plane to a secret safehouse for questioning. They grilled her and Vaughn about Solheznin, about the facility, about the torture, about the guards, about Solheznin's obsession with finding Sark. They questioned them for hours, separately and together. Sydney told them everything she could.

Well, almost everything.

After hours of grueling interrogation, Sydney and Vaughn were finally released. All she wanted to do was to head home, to be behind the wheel of her car, to drive along the freeway like everyone else, to blend into the crowd. Then maybe do a _real_ debrief with Sark in the morning. She tried to walk faster, to outstrip Vaughn, but he pulled her back by the elbow and into a window recess.

"Syd…" The eyes she simply couldn't handle staring into anymore were boring into her with exactly the kind of need that had confused and delighted and disgusted her for three days. He was about to translate his gaze into words and she _couldn't_ listen to it. Not after having looked at it for so long. Not after hours of being interrogated by Lauren. It was like she had overdosed on pining and love triangle melodrama and now had an aversion to the feeling—to all feeling.

She just wanted this bullshit to be over, in a way she hadn't before this trip. She wanted to stop hoping, to stop wishing, to stop reading things in Vaughn's eyes. She wanted it to be done.

"Vaughn, I can't—"

"Please listen to me. There's so much we need to—"

She disengaged her arm. "I'm exhausted," she lied (she'd had more than enough sleep on the plane, and was currently all jet-lagged in the wrong way, completely awake). "Can this wait?"

He stepped back, obviously hurt.

"Yeah," he said automatically. "Yeah. Get some rest, okay? You deserve it."

They parted ways, and Sydney went to the wardrobe department (read: closet) to return the baubles she'd borrowed for the mission. It was empty, as usual. She put her ruined shoes on the rack and, as she rummaged through her purse for the earrings she had borrowed, her eyes fell on a pile of wigs. Sydney stared at it, thinking back to the last time she'd been home.

Sark had definitely been going stir-crazy, and it was certain to have worsened over the past few days. If it got out of control, he might do something dangerous. To be honest, she was feeling kind of stir-crazy, too. Even beyond the prisoner confines of her last mission, it was the secret that was stifling her. Not to mention the fact that having someone around her again on a regular basis was awakening a lot of old remembrances of what it was like to be normal. Now that the basic human need for company—no matter how questionable the individual involved—was being somewhat fulfilled, higher-level desires, such as wanting to go out, were beginning to tingle. Here was an opportunity that, in her line of work, she should have thought of before.

She knew it was wrong and dangerous and completely nuts, and therefore she decided to just do, without thinking. Standing with her back to where she knew the hidden camera was, Sydney snatched a man's wig from the pile while returning the red one she had just used, and slipped the goods into her purse.

As she walked to the parking lot, detail after detail of a plan blossomed in her mind.

Sydney and her doorman hauled the giant box of groceries upstairs from where it had been sitting for a couple of days, since 'no one' had been home to accept the package.

Once he'd gone back to the lobby, she closed the door behind her and scanned the seemingly empty apartment. She wondered where Sark was hiding today. "It's just me," she announced to the air. Sark popped out of the front closet. She chuckled. It was just like Where's Waldo. And just like those books from her childhood, finding him was oddly comforting.

"Glad to see you survived the trip," Sark said before sinking into the couch and picking his book up where he had presumably just left it. Like nothing had happened. Like she hadn't been away for days. But his nonchalant posturing was forced. Sydney caught him sneaking sidelong glances at her as she made her way through the apartment. The naked relief on his face was obvious.

"Lucky for me, my dad was there."

"What happened?" he asked, dropping his previous attempts to disguise his concern.

"I don't want to talk about it tonight. Anyway, I'm sure you can guess. But hey, I'm back. I'm fine. Thanks for the info about the ducts, by the way. Came in handy." She smiled at him, a genuine smile, and finally, the weight of the past three days fell from her shoulders. She was home. And Sark's eyes, full of teasing and everything that was happily the opposite of Vaughn's angsty intensity, greeted her.

"I always endeavor to assist."

He quirked a smile at her and went back to reading. Yep, they were back.

Sydney couldn't deny it: this was exactly what she needed. This, _this_ had become comfortable, easy. This had somehow become easier than talking to Vaughn.

Her father was right, even though he didn't know the mechanics of it. This thing with Sark _was_ making her feel better, but it wasn't in some awkward mushy way. It was the combination of friendliness and fighting, the combination between partnership and antagonism that was helping her. Right now, she was looking forward to relaxing just as much as she was looking forward to sticking it to him.

Sydney walked to where Sark was sitting and shoved a shopping bag against his torso. He caught it deftly, with a surprised glance, and stood up.

"Gifts? Sydney, I don't know what to say."

"How about nothing? We're going out."

His eyes almost bugged out of his head. "Going out? As in a date?"

She shuddered at the implication, although she now didn't know how else she had expected him to take it. "That's your disguise. And it isn't a gift. You owe me $108.47. You can add it to your tab."

As he peered into the bag, Sydney studied Sark's face and poised herself. The regret lessened as she prepped for her favorite part of the plan. As soon as he looked up again, she zoned in and clocked him, _hard_, right on the crooked part of his lower lip.

Sark staggered backwards, clenching his jaw and letting free a string of expletives. "Have you completely lost your mind, woman? What the bloody hell was that for?"

Sydney crossed her arms and smiled at him with feigned benevolence. "Do I really need to list all the reasons? Though technically, that was just to disguise your most recognizable feature. By the time you're finished changing, that should have swelled up nicely. Go on, now," she ordered, pushing him and the bag into the bathroom.

She was right. Only a couple of minutes after she'd finished changing into jeans and a tee-shirt, Sark emerged from the bathroom with a lip that had swelled to even out with the other side. Sydney gaped at his transformation and silently patted herself on the back for a job well-done.

Geek-chic black frame glasses obscured his giant blue eyes. A Hugh Grant-like mop of wavy brown locks rested atop a bottle-tanned face. The brown polo shirt fit loosely over Gap jeans that she was sure he had shuddered to put on.

And even though she'd picked them out herself, actually seeing him wear the black Converse sneakers she'd bought him cracked her up. That purchase had been the _coup de grace_, the most torturous element of the entire get-up.

"I look a fright."

"Really? I think it's a huge improvement," she lied. Not that the person in front of her wasn't cute. It was more that… Sydney realized that she'd never noticed exactly how good-looking Sark was until now when she could barely recognize him. Vaughn had used to tell her that she was more beautiful as herself than as any of her aliases; only now did she understand what he'd meant.

"This bronzer is going to give me skin irritation."

Sydney shrugged. "Who cares? It's not like anyone other than me is going to be looking at you for the next few days."

"I know," he replied softly.

"Hat on," she said, pointing at the Dodgers cap she'd bought.

"Must I?"

"Do you want to go out or don't you?"

Sark sighed and arranged the cap lightly over his fake brown hair.

Sydney looked around the apartment. "How did you get in here? You know, originally?"

He pointed towards the bathroom. "Shaft. All the bathroom windows are frosted, so no one could have seen me as I scaled this side of the building."

"Well, that's the way you're going back out. I'll meet you at that corner in ten minutes? It'll look like we just bumped into one another and decided to go for drinks. Got it?" Sydney pointed towards northwest, indicating a destination through the walls.

He nodded.

Together, they went to the bathroom. Sydney opened the small window and helped Sark out. She watched him go and then went back to the living room. This was the first time she'd been alone in her apartment in weeks. It felt empty, quiet.

She timed his descent, and a few minutes later, just 'happened' to meet him crossing the street towards her.

"Hey, there!" she said, feigning surprise, even though there wasn't really anyone around. But you never knew.

"Fancy meeting you here," he replied.

"I'm not doing anything tonight. You want to grab a bite?"

"Absolutely."

Together they began walking down the street.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this date?" he asked, hurrying at her heels. "I must have been a very good boy, indeed, to have earned such a treat."

"It's not a pleasure at all. Nor is it a date. I just didn't want you getting antsy and doing something stupid. This way, you can get it out of your system in a way that I control."

"I see," he replied. "And where are you taking me? Dressed like this, I can't imagine it's anywhere special."

"Just a place in the neighborhood. Walking distance."

Sydney watched as Sark tried to repress his exhilaration at feeling the low-hanging evening sun beat down on him.

"This way," she said, indicating a left turn around the block with her head, to keep him from crossing the street.

"The mission must have gone very badly, indeed, to have warranted all this," Sark said, and Sydney knew him well enough by now to hear the fishing behind the sarcasm. "Did they use the water mask?"

Well, yes, actually, they had, but not on her. On Vaughn. The sons of bitches had made her watch while they tortured him, the man she loved—or had loved, or maybe could still love… something—within an inch of his life. Only some information she'd shouted in deranged horror had stopped them. Something remembered at random from one of her late night strategy sessions with Sark. She wouldn't tell him that, though. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Just like she wouldn't tell him how the only reason why she'd passed the lie detector test was because they'd framed the question as "Does the _CIA_ know Sark's whereabouts?"

But regardless, she resolutely didn't want to talk about it. She'd lived through it for three days, and then spent the entire day being grilled on it. All she wanted right now was a glass of shitty American white wine and maybe a hamburger and cheese fries. All she wanted was to feel normal. Even if normal meant hanging out with a disguised Sark in some generic sports bar-restaurant.

He took the hint when she didn't answer his question. He didn't press her any further. As they walked, he chatted lightly about his activities during her absence. With his dry sense of humour and talent for narrative construction, he managed to turn a tale of absolute nothingness (watching people out the window, reading Dumas, following some sordid celebrity story on E! Network, a Charlie Rose interview, adventures with bathroom plumbing) into something relatively diverting. Sydney knew that he understood, knew that he was being jovial for her benefit.

She was still giggling by the time they reached the restaurant. Sark froze when he saw her opening the door.

"This? This is the place? Sydney, please." He looked at horror through the windows at the multiple television screens showing various sporting events.

"Sark."

He sighed and followed her inside. "The things I do for you."

"Oh, please."

They grabbed a booth in a dark corner, far from the windows and the eyes of most of the restaurant. The Dodgers were playing, just starting the second inning when the waitress came by with the menus. Sark studied it as though he'd never been presented with a choice of different kinds of quesadillas before.

Sydney had been here a bunch of times, years ago, with Will and Francie. She only needed to do a quick check to make sure her favorite burger and salad were still on the menu.

Sark peeked at her from over the top of his menu. "Why do you keep staring at me?"

"This is almost the first time I've ever seen you in a get-up like the ones I always wear. I was wondering if you have it in you."

"You doubt my skills?"

"No, I doubt your ability to suppress your egomania enough to play any role but yourself."

"My ego is no larger than appropriate." He winked at her, knowing full well that he was being an asshole. "At any rate, you are correct. Going as myself has been a perk, but also a danger, that comes with the advisory positions I often occupy."

"'Advisory positions'?" Sydney scoffed. "Hired help is more like it."

"I prefer 'trusted consultant'."

"Lackey."

"Protégé."

They glared at one another, neither one wanting to give way. The stalemate ended only because the waitress swung by to take their drink orders.

"I'll have whatever Pinot Grigio you're serving," Sydney said.

Sark wrinkled his nose. "Honestly?"

"I'm a simple girl with simple pleasures. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

"You are anything but simple."

The waitress looked back and forth between them, following their antagonism, her pencil hovering over her notepad.

"For you, sir?"

"I doubt you carry even a Chateauneuf-du-Pape in this establishment. I'll take a Maker's Mark, on the rocks. I doubt even your bartender could destroy that."

After taking their food orders, too, she departed. Sydney could tell that the waitress wanted to hate their table, but Sark had smiled so charmingly, even while insulting her and her colleagues, that the poor girl had flailed a bit, despite herself.

"And what do you consider yourself?" Sark asked, picking up a conversation Sydney had completely forgotten.

"Huh?"

"If I am only a 'lackey', what do you consider yourself?"

"I'm an agent. It's pretty straightforward."

"A word with about the same meaning as the ones I have been employing. We're not so different, you and I."

"Yes, we are. We're very different. You're a jerk who works sells his soul to criminals, while I serve something better."

"The water. It must be something in the water."

Sydney looked at her water glass in panic, immediately fearful that they'd been poisoned, but Sark shook his head.

"An idiom, love, nothing literal. What I mean is that very few other country's agents are like this. The eternal hubris of your government has brainwashed you into believing that your employers are more righteous than mine. They aren't. I know you, Sydney Bristow. And I know that neither one of us derives any pleasure from what we do. Maybe once upon a time, but the haze of excitement has long since faded. The only difference between us is that in the end, all you will have to show for your scars, your broken relationships, and your lost youth, will be a small pension that will barely sustain you through an unglamorous old age, while I, on the other hand, will retire in a few weeks, possibly to live on a yacht like the one you stole from me the first time I glimpsed you."

Sydney knew he was right; he was a lackey, but so was she. And just like her, he hoped to one day be free of this bullshit. She was helping him do that. Soon, he'd be free, and she'd be… just where she'd always been.

If the past three days had solidified anything, it was the understanding that she had no desire to do this anymore. But she didn't see what she could do about it. She was stuck.

Trying to reintroduce some levity into the conversation (this was supposed to be her fun evening out, dammit), she asked, "What's to stop me from coming and stealing your yacht, just like I did with the first one?"

Where her question was playful, his answer wasn't.

"What's to stop you from coming and staying on it with me?"

"You mean to return the favor of staying at my place all this time?" she asked, still trying to will him back into teasing banter.

"No. Not to return the favor."

Thankfully, the return of the waitress with their drinks spared Sydney from having to reply. She downed glass of wine.

"Another round, please?"

If this is what Sark was going to be like, she was going to need a _lot_ more booze.

"The Dodgers are winning," Sydney said, looking up at the TV screen and trying her best to change the subject, at the very least.

"Are they your… your team?" he asked, as though he'd never engaged in such a conversation and was unsure of the vocabulary.

"I guess so. I just root for whatever LA team is playing. You know, like rooting for your country in the Olympics." She stopped, remembering that he technically didn't have a country. "What country do you root for?"

"Whichever is winning at the moment in whatever sport I happen to be watching."

Typical.

"Perhaps the next time you feel inclined to play dress-up with me, we could go to a game."

Sydney was surprised. "Really?"

He gestured around him. "It can't be any worse than here."

"This is a perfectly respectable place, I'll have you know."

"I'd hoped that a few weeks of my company would have improved your tastes, Sydney, but apparently I need to redouble my efforts."

She shook her head. "You really are the most giant pain in the ass."

But he caught her grin, and replied, "So are you."

He finished his scotch just in time for the next one to arrive.

And the next.

And the next.

The waitress kept removing the empties, so Sydney lost track of how many glasses of wine she'd had before switching over to scotch, to join him. And whose idea _that_ had been escaped her, as well.

Much later, as they (well, she, with Sark's grumbling acquiescence) ordered some emergency nachos as a kind of dessert, Sydney realized she could somewhat count the drinks by thinking of them in terms of stories. One round had been taken up with the tale of how she'd once helped Will on some investigative reporting, using her skills unbeknownst to him. Relatively impersonal stuff, that. Then it was his turn, and she'd heard more about this mysterious boarding school for poshly Catholic little boys in Ireland, something about how he'd manipulated all the clocks and calendars in the establishment to trick the nuns into giving the entire school a holiday. Then Sydney told him about playing a turkey in the school play.

Laughing all the while, drinks continuing to come. Their hands accidentally brushed while aiming for the same cheese-encrusted chip ("cheese spelled with a Z, most likely," Sark had said). They froze. Electricity ran through her; she chalked it up to the alcohol. The room felt brighter, more alive. Why should physical contact be any different? But Sark didn't move his fingers, and neither did she.

With different hands, they reached for different chips.

Later, a little hazier, fingers now somehow entwined, nachos dwindling, conversation a little more on the side of things they'd normally never share with one another… Something about a mission Sark and Irina had run, playing a mother and son (jealousy flared in Sydney's chest). Something about Sydney sleeping with Will on that mission a couple of months ago and finding his punk outfits weirdly sexy (Sark's lip curled almost imperceptibly, but Sydney still caught it). Something about how a rookie Sark had bungled his first ever assignment just as badly as 18-year-old Sydney had bungled hers (no one started out as a pro). Something about how she'd actually respected his skills that one time they did that job in Paris. Something about how he'd been waiting to work with Irina Derevko's daughter for at least six years before he met her. Something about how she'd poisoned the toothpaste on his first evening in her apartment. Something about how he'd known she would, so he'd packed every conceivable brand before coming, throwing the ruined one into the trash without her knowledge.

"Is that what you want to do when this is over? Retire? Live on a yacht somewhere?" Sydney asked, suddenly returning to a much earlier topic.

"Perhaps not the yacht. But somewhere quiet. Highly secure. With minimal occasion for bullets to be aimed at my skull. I've enjoyed my time reading in your home. I think the lifestyle would suit me, provided I had the freedom to go out much more often."

"Good."

He finished his drink, moved on to the next one. "Why are you so interested?"

"I need to know I'm not just helping you start the next evil organization. I need to know this is something I should be doing."

"I give you my word."

His thumb stroked her palm, who knows how long after that first brush of fingers. She should have known better, but between his words, the accompanying look, the physical contact, the way she felt that she knew him now… she believed him.

"And you?" he asked.

"My retirement isn't as imminent as yours."

"But if it were?"

"I don't know. Maybe teach."

"Like Michael Vaughn did while you were away?"

Sydney bristled. "No, like _I_ wanted to do before I ever met him, when I was still with Danny."

"Right." Sark chewed lazily, contemplatively. Then, "Do you hate her?"

"Lauren?"

"Yes."

"I'd hate her even more if she were less of a bitch," Sydney admitted, for the first time ever aloud.

"Well, it's a good thing she is, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Unfortunately, Michael Vaughn is perfectly likeable, so I hate him as fully as possible."

Sydney stared at him, wondered where this was coming from, and why with such intensity. Why now? Why at all? She knew how Sark was looking at her, how he was caressing her hand. It struck her in a way she hadn't let it before tonight.

She needed to keep ignoring it. For her own sanity.

"I gotta pee," she said.

Sark wrinkled his nose. "If you hadn't already made it crystal clear that this wasn't a date, I would certainly know now."

Sydney stumbled to the bathroom. It wasn't particularly clean. She sat on the toilet, her head slumping against the wall beside her, the room spinning around her. There was nothing like standing up to let you know exactly how drunk you are, and Sydney was very drunk indeed. She lost track of how long she sat there, and only an impatient knock on the door roused her. She bumped into Sark on her way back to the booth. Looked like he'd had to pee, too.

"I've already paid," he said.

"You didn't have to do that."

"I know."

They left, arms around one another, holding on to each other for dear life, looking like so much more than they should have been, than a blackmailer and his mark. Even though he was mostly supporting her weight, Sydney could tell from Sark's uncharacteristically uneven gait that she wasn't the only one who'd had too much to drink. She wondered how much of what he'd told her he would regret in the morning.

They were a block away from Sydney's apartment building when she heard her name being called.

"Syd?"

Oh fuck. It was Weiss, holding a bag from the burrito joint down the street. Sydney waved at him, hoping he'd go away, but, of course, he stopped to chat.

She was _not_ sober enough to handle this.

"What's up?" Weiss asked conversationally, and Sydney could see him trying hard not to stare at Sark.

"Just out for dinner." She knew not introducing him would end up causing more suspicion than otherwise, so she said, "Hey, Weiss, this is a… a friend of mine…"

"Adam," Sark filled in for her.

"Sean," Weiss replied, and shook Sark's hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Sean. Syd, why did you just call him Weiss?" Sark asked in a perfect born-and-bred SoCal drawl that threw her off completely. He and his crazy new accent turned to look at her with a beautifully feigned expression of confusion.

Sydney wanted to giggle. She wanted to smack him. She wanted to die. Then her head started to pound, and most of all, she wanted to lay down.

"Yeah, it's… it's a work thing. We call each other by our last names," she answered lamely. What was wrong with her? This was her job. She was great at her job. Why couldn't she just pretend? It was the accent, she decided. It was too surreal to exist.

"So you work together _and_ live in the same building? Sounds like an awesome carpooling opportunity," Sark said, and Sydney really did almost fall over this time. More than the accent and the vocabulary ('awesome'?), his entire posture was different. Despite the stellar disguise, the man she'd spent the past few hours with had walked and talked and frowned in exactly the same exasperatingly familiar manner Sark always had. However, the man standing next to her right now was a complete stranger. He was good. He was really, really good. Sydney could just imagine how much fun the little fucker was having.

"No, I live down the block." Weiss pointed at his building and gave Sydney a sidelong glance that pretty much said to expect major teasing the next day.

"Adam and I…" Sydney began. She was ready to concoct a beautiful fiction about how she and 'Adam' knew one another that was sure to humiliate Sark, but he cut her off.

"Syd and I went to high school together," he lied easily. Sydney cringed to hear him getting away with calling her 'Syd'. The blue eyes-the only recognizable part of him-looked down at her with a warm twinkle. Damn him. "I haven't seen her in years, but we ran into each other in the video store last week and made plans to hang out when she got back from her work trip."

"Wow. We only got back today. You didn't waste any time, did you?" Weiss was looking at her incredulously, and Sydney felt even more embarrassed.

"We had a lot to catch up on," Sark said.

He punched her lightly in the shoulder like they were old chums. Sark, who had shot at her and drowned her in flesh-eating acid, was now giving her friendly punches in front of Weiss, and she was letting him. They'd also been sharing a bed, but this was different.

"We had dinner and drinks at that sports bar around the corner," she added lamely.

"And I think someone had a few too many," Weiss said, commenting on her slumped posture, which was now more from discomfort than drunkenness. To Sydney's dismay, she watched as Sark made eye contact with Weiss and nodded vigorously in the affirmative. Weiss laughed.

"I'm just going to make sure she gets home safely. Nice to meet you, Sean."

"You, too. Take care of her."

"I've been trying to," Sark replied, with more meaning than the occasion called for, with a glance at her that was too fervent for this charade. Sydney looked up at him wonderingly, but the alcohol and her anger drove the query out of her mind. She couldn't believe Weiss. He got an F in people reading skills if he was actually going to leave her to the tender mercies of Sark.

As Weiss walked away, Sark whispered, in his regular, self-satisfied accent, thank goodness, "That went over quite well, didn't it?"

This had been the worst idea ever. Why couldn't she have let him drive himself crazy in the house? Why couldn't she have said no to this ridiculous arrangement in the first place? Jail would have been preferable to this humiliation. She'd been fine with everything when it had been within the confines of her apartment, a secret shame, a secret comfort that no one else needed to know about. But now Weiss, whether he knew it or not, had seen them together, and Sydney felt violated.

"You should go. You know, leave me publicly and then crawl in through the bathroom window again."

"I may not be quite as intoxicated as you are, but I am in no state to scale buildings. And I doubt you would be able to make it into the apartment without my assistance. Plus, I just promised Agent Weiss I would see you safely home. I wouldn't want to let him down, now, would I? No, I think 'Adam' should spend the night, and then leave through the front door tomorrow morning. I'll climb back in through the bathroom immediately afterward."

Sydney shivered as she took this in. It was a good plan. It was the only plan. But it meant that Sark was going to spend the night in her apartment. In a real, almost official kind of way.

"You're an evil SOB."

"You like it."

She was putty in her own skin, too floppy to slap him like he deserved. He was right; she was falling down and wouldn't even have made it this far if it hadn't been for his arm around her waist, warm and supportive.

"Fine," she said. "Let's get this over with."

Together, arm in arm, entwined around one another like real friends, or something more, her nose buried in his neck, they staggered into the lobby and took the elevator upstairs. Sark practically carried her to the bed, and then deposited her on it. She was barely conscious, and was only able to watch as he took off her sneakers and socks, one by one. The motion was not at all sensual, but there was something about the way his eyes were fixed on hers, and not on the task, that made her dizzy in a way not attributable to alcohol.

Sydney's fingers ghosted hesitantly over the button of her jeans. They were way too hot and way too itchy to sleep in and she wanted them off, now, but…

"I'll help you take them off. I'll keep my eyes shut. You have my word."

"Pass me those," she slurred, pointing inaccurately at a pair of gym shorts folded on the dresser. As he turned to get them, she unfastened the buttons and wriggled the jeans past her hips. "Don't look," she said. She watched him return, eyes closed. He threw the shorts at her, and stuck his hands out, blindly. Sydney placed her stretched ankles into them, and he pulled her pants off for her. Now free, she rolled haphazardly around, and somehow managed to get her shorts on and perform the trick of removing her bra while keeping her shirt on.

"Can I open my eyes now?"

"Yesh."

He did, and pressed his lips together, repressing an obvious desire to laugh at her. They were even now, she thought. She'd encountered her fair share of sleepy, vulnerable Sark, and now he'd gotten a full blast of wasted, vulnerable Sydney. Some of the things she'd told him at the restaurant flitted through her head again. She couldn't believe she'd opened up like that.

Oh well. Too late now.

Standing beside the bed, he leaned over, placing one hand on either side of her head, his face a little too close to hers, regarding her with the same look he'd had after their _Star Wars_ marathon. Like he was contemplating kissing her. Part of her might not have minded if he did. He smelled good. His eyes were beautiful. His freckles were cute.

God, she was drunk.

"I'll get you a glass of water," he said, struggling with something.

Then he surprised her, held her head and stroked her cheek with his thumb. Sydney pressed into the touch. But just as quickly as it had come on, the moment was over. Sark straightened himself and turned to leave the room.

"Sark," Sydney moaned, weirdly disappointed, watching his ass as he staggered out of the bedroom. "Before I forget, the disk is in my purse."

"Excellent. Let's go through it tomorrow."

She listened to his steps, to the sound of him washing the bronzer off his face, to his walk to the kitchen, to the running of the tap as he filled a glass for her, to the sound of his feet padding back into the bedroom. Sark, now blond, pale, and glasses-free, deposited the water by her nightstand and pulled off his shirt and pants until he was clad only in boxers. He turned out the lights and fell into bed beside her with a less-than-elegant grunt.

And then she was out cold.


	8. Chapter 8

Sydney could see them talking about her before she actually heard them.

From the other end of the hallway and through the glass, she watched their backs, ranged around the conference table. Dixon's shoulders hunched with the tension of someone who is trying and failing not to laugh. Weiss's wide-armed gesticulations imitated Sydney's own drunken awkwardness of the night before. Marshall's outstretched neck ensured he didn't miss a beat.

"Sydney!"

She turned around to see her father raising a hand to stop her. She glanced over her shoulder as she waited for him to catch up to her. She watched Vaughn and Lauren walk into the conference room and Marshall was asked to babble out the source of their mirth. Vaughn's face drained of color, and Lauren locked eyes with Sydney through the glass with a small but triumphant smile on her face.

Sydney's father was watching them, too.

"Word is you had a late night."

"Word travels fast," she absently replied.

"It's a small office."

"Don't we have a meeting now?"

She regretted her harshness the minute the words had come out of her mouth, but it couldn't have come as a surprise. They'd never chatted about her dating habits, not even back when she'd actually had some. Even without it being about Sark, there was no reason for them to start now.

He didn't blink. "I'll be there in a moment. You can start without me."

Great. Not only had she just been subjected to a father's judgment, but now she'd have to go in there without his nonsense-quashing presence.

Sydney took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the conference room.

"Sydney," Lauren cooed, "Weiss has just been telling us about your charming evening out last night."

"Weiss said he seemed to really care about you," Vaughn choked out. "That he seemed like a good guy."

Sydney repressed a snort.

"It was nothing, okay guys?" Sydney said distractedly, looking out the window. "Let's get to work."

"That mark on your neck doesn't look like nothing," Marshall said. Weiss and Dixon snickered. Vaughn simply looked sick.

Sydney's hands flew to her collar.

That son of a bitch.

Trying to will the redness from her face, she sputtered, "At least I don't spend my mornings sitting in parking lots, watching people make out, like a creeper."

"What are you talking about?" Weiss looked genuinely confused. "What parking lot?"

"Outside the… the Starbucks…" Sydney stopped herself. It was clear he had no idea what she was talking about.

That's when she got it. And bit her lip in mortification.

This whole thing with Sark had officially spiraled far beyond 'professionally disastrous and personally problematic'. This had become a full-scale nuclear crisis.

Something had to be done.

_2 HOURS EARLIER_

Sydney woke up with her face pressed against something that wasn't her pillow. Something warm.

Sark's shoulder. She'd basically been slobbering on it. She was all the way over on his side of the bed, so she couldn't even yell at him for encroaching on his space; she'd unconsciously come over there and snuggled him of her own accord. She made a motion to move away, but he grunted and wrapped his arm around her. She wasn't sure which was more disturbing: the idea that this was a natural reaction of his when asleep, or the possibility that he was awake.

From the sound of his breathing, though, he was definitely asleep.

There wasn't time to deal with this, though, because she could tell she only had seconds to make it to the bathroom. She quickly unraveled herself from his arms, and didn't have time to close the bedroom door behind her like she wanted, because the copious amount of alcohol in her stomach was already on its way up.

Sark staggered in a minute later to find her curled up on the cold tile floor, as unglamorous as he'd probably ever seen her.

She felt him reach out to pull her hair back, but she'd shrugged him off. She had never liked people coming in to comfort her while she vomited. She had never understood anyone who _did_.

"Go away, Sark."

"Have it your own way."

By the time she reemerged, ready for work, Sark was back in his disguise from the previous evening, bottle tan and all. He stood by the sink, downing orange juice like medicine.

"Better?" he asked.

"Not really."

"I feel about the same, to tell you the truth. At any rate, I propose you drop me off at a nearby public place on your way to the office. I'll then work my way back inside the building unseen."

This was new for them… driving around like some normal LA couple, her letting him out of her sight in broad daylight. Sydney didn't like it. She liked her routines, even when they were routines with him, and therefore didn't enjoy this new twist to the pattern. The entire situation made her nervous.

She'd had fun the night before. Really, she'd been having fun with him for weeks. It was silly to try to pretend otherwise anymore. The truth was, if he ran off, she'd be back to where she'd been before: horribly lonely. She'd miss him. She hated herself for it, but there it was.

But what if this was it? What if he had no intention of climbing back into her apartment? What if the time they'd shared was nothing but an elaborate set of lies and games on his side? What if he had all along intended to make a fool of her? What if her unwanted and uncomfortable feelings of semi-friendship were one-sided?

Even worse was the terrible, crippling fear that while she found herself growing close with Sark, perhaps he was still playing a game, that maybe those late nights and comradely conversations were an elaborate ruse, and she was the fool in the middle of it.

If his goal had been to humiliate her, then the previous night had successfully upped the stakes on how deeply his inevitable betrayal (this was Sark, after all) would devastate and humiliate her. It was Irina all over again, except this time she didn't have the 'long lost mommy' excuse to explain away her stupidity. And this time there was more inexplicable shoulder drooling.

The nearest Starbucks was only a couple of minutes away, but the horrible knot of nervous tension in Sydney's stomach made the drive seem longer.

While she churned through all this, Sark, for his part, wore the same mask of derisive nonchalance he always did.

"I'll buy you breakfast," he said as they pulled into the driveway.

"I'm all right."

"It's the least I can do to express my appreciation for our night of passion."

"Stop it," she said distractedly, but followed him out of the car anyway.

He watched her as they walked. "'Stop it?' Sydney, you can do better than that."

She could, but she was feeling too off her game for their usual banter.

He tried baiting again as they waited in line for their cappucinos. "I suppose this is where I thank you for a charming evening, and hope you share my desire to do it again."

"Er, sure. Whatever."

He seemed confused and disappointed when she yet again failed to respond with her usual smackdown. "Sydney? Is everything all right? Do you need to vomit again?"

"No, I'm fine." Except that she wasn't. He knew it, too, and kept glancing quizzically at her while they waited for their coffee.

"For the sake of the charade," Sark said when they exited, she to head back to her vehicle and he to go wherever, "please don't slap me."

Before Sydney could ask 'slap you for what', he'd leaned in and clenched his lips on her earlobe. She stiffened, but before she could make up her mind how to react, he whispered, a little too seductively for the words, "Agent Weiss is in the parking lot, watching us."

Sark put his arms around her and, despite the warm morning sunshine, Sydney knew he could feel her shivering in his arms, too paralyzed by the sensation of being held to stop him, even though every sane neuron in her brain was shrieking in dismay. He let his lips traipse their way, playfully yet purposefully, down along the artery in her neck until they reached what was apparently a juicy enough spot.

And then he stopped. And _sucked_, with a slight partition that allowed his tongue to wet her skin. Involuntarily, Sydney's eyes closed and her lips parted slightly in a silent pant. She couldn't help it, but she could at least try to keep him from noticing. Her brain was too fuzzy from the hangover and from this almost-forgotten sensation to even look for Weiss.

"You'll excuse me for not bidding you farewell properly," he said smugly, "but spearmint can only do so much to mask the taste of vomit. Also, if I remember correctly, you threatened to 'end me' if I ever kissed you."

He straightened up and regarded her with a self-satisfied smirk. Now that he wasn't touching her anymore, her senses returned. If she hadn't been able to smack him for daring to touch her, she definitely wanted to smack him for the smile.

"Damn straight. You're lucky I'm not bludgeoning you to death right now."

He smiled, pleased that he'd finally been able to shake her out of her numb non-reactions. "There she is. I'll see you tonight, darling."

He meant it playfully, but Sydney had learned by now that Sark was at his most sincere when he was being playful.

Which meant he'd be home by the time she got there that evening.

The knot of worry in her stomach loosened.

And then tightened again. Oh god, what a mess.

All day, Sydney sat through her meetings in a blushing daze that she was sure the rest of them were attributing to afterglow.

She barely paid attention to the discussion. She was too busy thinking. And remembering.

She remembered how Sark had told Weiss his name was Adam and that he knew Sydney from high school. She remembered that there actually _was_ a guy from high school named Adam. Adam Silverman, who had moppy black hair and brown eyes and who wore glasses—just like the disguise she'd given Sark.

Whereas Sydney had simply grabbed the first costume elements at hand, with no particular person in mind, the name Sark had associated with the cobbled-together look couldn't have been a coincidence; with Sark there _were_ no coincidences. He must have done his research, probably looked up a copy of her yearbook before this entire drama had started (she knew there weren't any lying around the house), and memorized the names and faces of everyone in her graduating class.

Creepy little fucker.

But somehow, it wasn't creepy. Not really. It was _thorough_. It was professional. It was kinda brilliant. It was the sort of thing her dad probably would have suggested as a 'best practice'.

Sydney remembered more things, too. She remembered how she'd lain in bed, drunkenly staring into those giant blue eyes, wondering if he'd kiss her, almost hoping he would. She remembered the way she had actually let him help her out of her pants, and the way she'd found the little smirk he'd given her while his eyes were shut _cute_. She remembered the way his lips felt as they nipped her skin and how she'd been almost (fine, not almost—_full on_) aroused by it.

This was out of control. Things had been spinning quietly but unstoppably out of control since the moment he stepped into her apartment that first day. Alcohol didn't explain it away, because she knew deep down this had nothing to do with how many glasses of scotch or wine she'd had. And that's what scared her; it's what had been bothering her at the Starbucks.

If she didn't do something to change the status quo, there was no telling what insanity might follow.

She needed to regain some modicum of control, to add that tension and antagonism back. Hiding secrets and double-crossing a possible double-cross: this was how she and Sark should be, not this bizarrely easy domestic bliss they'd somehow fallen into.

There was only one thing to do. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it before.

She flagged her father down in the hallway late in the afternoon.

"Dad!"

"Yes, Sydney?"

"There's something I need to tell you."

She didn't tell him everything. Just enough to feel more empowered, less alone in her head.

She told him how on her recent mission, she'd been taunted with the knowledge that files were out there with her name on them. Bogus files that incriminated her in the eyes of the American government and which spun well-crafted lies about how she'd been a triple agent during her two years as Julia Thorne. She told him that someone connected with the Covenant had them somewhere, and that one day these files may be used to blackmail her.

The fact that the papers were _currently_ being used to blackmail her, that the person doing the blackmail was _Sark_ and that he was currently curled up on her couch… These were details she left out.

As always, her father promised to devote himself to the case. He'd never failed in any work-oriented development before, so she felt sure that it would only be a matter of days before he tracked down the originals Sark had threatened her with that first night.

It was enough to level the playing field, but not so much that the arrangement would be compromised. The end goal—taking down the Covenant—had to be protected at all costs.

Or at least, that's what she told herself.

But more honestly, all this—the files, the blackmail, the Covenant—had little to do with why she'd decided to tell him.

At any rate, Sydney felt more in control as she drove home. From now on, the weird thing that was going on between them would be easier to handle, because she could just write it off as just another assignment: getting close to the mark, getting past his defenses, scouring for information. Whether or not she enjoyed it would now be irrelevant. This was work.

Right.

But one thing remained the same: the sight of him popping out of a closet as soon as she'd shut the front door. She wanted to smile, but knew she was supposed to be yelling at him, making up for her inability to be 'normal' with him earlier.

He moved to help her drag in the heavy box of groceries that had been delivered that day, but she stopped him with an imperious gesture.

"Sark."

"Where shall we go tonight?" he asked cheerfully, ignoring her best efforts at seething rage. "Shall I don last night's costume or—"

"Sark, you gave me a hickey." Now that she'd started, it wasn't too hard to continue. It was a nice release after a stressful day. He seemed extra pleased by her return to form.

"Ah, that. I'd been wondering how you might discover it. Tell me. Did you see it in the mirror or did someone have to point—"

"You gave me a goddamn hickey and Weiss wasn't even there!"

"Ah. You discovered that, too, did you? I've always said your skills were second to—"

"Sark! What the fuck!"

"Well—"

She was really warmed up now. Genuinely pissed off, and with good reason. Yep, telling her dad had been one of her best ideas ever.

"I have never been so embarrassed or made to feel so unprofessional in my whole life. Not even when I was _literally, actually_ sleeping with my handler! I had to endure my own _father_ giving me the eyebrow."

"Yes, I know that infamous Jack Bristow look. Your mother gives the same one, you know, only using the other eyebrow. I wonder which of them began doing it first." He looked at her, testing her mood. "Angry as you undoubtedly are, you seem to be taking it all rather better than I expected."

That made her stop. She wondered if he was onto her. Which, messed up as it sounds, made her happy. Ah yes, games. This was all so much better.

She half-playfully, half-seriously reached out to slap him, but he parried the blow. She tried again, and was blocked once more. She kept going and soon they were locked together wrestling on the floor.

"I've had all day to think about how to make you pay," she said as she pinned his arms to the floor. God, he looked good from this angle.

"And?"

"And…" The unmistakably hopeful look in his eyes sapped away her steam. She finished awkwardly, "I'm still working on it. It's going to have to be something really good."

"I look forward to it."

They stared at one another for another minute, each waiting for the next barb. After awhile, though, they couldn't sustain the tension any longer, so they dissolved into laughter. And happily, Sydney didn't mind. It didn't have to be real. Even if it was, she could tell herself it wasn't.

"Weiss said you seemed like 'a good guy'," Sydney said, giving in and flopping down next to him. "I mean… I almost couldn't keep a straight face. And you know how good I am at keeping a straight face."

"I'll be sure to thank Agent Weiss for the kind, if misguided, compliment if ever this arrangement of ours is found out."

"Like it's in either of our best interests to let that happen."

"It would not be the ideal scenario, I grant you. But perhaps we could be roommates in a CIA cell. It would be like old times."

Sydney was confused. "We've never shared a cell before. Do you mean it would be like now times?"

"Yes. I've been quite enjoying myself, Sydney. I realized today that I've neglected to tell you so. Now that you've managed to stop acting like a harpy, you've been excellent company these past few weeks. Thank you."

Sydney looked away to hide her smile. She knew he was every bit as good of an actor as she was, so she shouldn't be falling for this crap but… "You're just trying to butter me up after your crimes against my person this morning."

He didn't deny it. "The context doesn't negate the veracity of the statement."

"The context of blackmail kind of does," Sydney said, all while thinking _Hopefully not for long_.

"Simply an inducement, Sydney. There is nothing malicious behind my actions; I assure you that once this is over, I'll have the documents destroyed. I have no wish to see you discredited."

"Only you could find blackmail something other than malicious."

Sark got up to grab a bottle of wine and two glasses. He waited expectantly for her to join him.

"If I may return to my original question: what shall we do tonight?" he asked.

"Well—"

The doorbell rang.

Sark and Sydney glanced at one another, frozen. Sydney shrugged, silently signaling to him that she hadn't been expecting anyone.

She went to the door and looked through the peephole.

"Vaughn," she mouthed to Sark.

Sark took his gun out from underneath the couch cushions and slinked off into the bedroom.

Once Sark was out of sight (and damn him for not shutting the door behind him), Sydney let Vaughn in. He entered sheepishly. It was his first time at her house since her return from the dead.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

Vaughn took a quick look around. "Is this a bad time?" He pointed nervously at the wine glasses and meat plate. "It looks like you're expecting company."

"No, I'm just… cleaning up after yesterday. What's going on?"

Vaughn gestured at the sofa. "Can I?"

"Sure."

They sat stiffly together, the awkwardness rolling off them in waves.

"I was going to invite myself over yesterday," he began. "But you said you were too tired to talk."

Yikes. Sydney had forgotten all about that. "I—"

"It's okay. You had plans."

"It wasn't a plan. It was all really impromptu. I just kind of ran into—"

"It's not a big deal. I just wish… I guess I just wish you'd told me."

Sydney went from apologetic to angry in a minute. Now she almost wished she _had_ had plans and lied about it.

"I'm not obligated to keep you abreast of my whereabouts, Vaughn. Especially not anymore."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Then what did you mean?"

He stared at the floor, rightfully too ashamed to look her in the face. "I miss you. Can't you tell? Wasn't it obvious all those days we were locked up together this week? Don't you miss me, too?"

Sydney opened her mouth to agree, but then shut it again before any words fell out. What she'd been about to say would have been automatic. And wholly untrue, she suddenly knew. She didn't miss him.

Ever since coming back, she been wanting so many things—her friends, her life, him—that she'd somehow pinpointed all of the wanting on just him, since friends and a life no longer appeared to be open to her. It had been awhile since she'd stopped to think, and see that her longing had much less to do with him than she'd been telling herself.

It was clear now. The reason these scenes exhausted her wasn't because she missed him so much; it was because she didn't even care anymore.

Whereas a few months ago when her heart would have leapt to see Vaughn distraught and jealous, these days, his obvious emotional turmoil simply left her exhausted. What with harboring criminals in her home, secretly taking down the Covenant, and being forced every day by Sark's presence to take a good, hard look at her life and what she wanted out of it… well, Sydney had somehow, slowly, gotten to a point where this star-crossed bullshit wasn't doing it for her anymore.

It was all a pretty monumental realization. The weight of it squeezed her. She wanted to cry. She could feel the tears starting to brim over. But the thing was… she wasn't sad. Not about him. She was feeling a heady and confusing combination of relief and emptiness. She'd put him aside, without even realizing it, and she knew that was healthy. But at the same time, not wanting left her feeling adrift.

Vaughn misinterpreted her misty eyes as a reconciliation waiting to happen. Sydney was too busy reeling from her own internal eurekas to stop him from reaching out and grabbing her hand. She numbly let him drag it over to his lap.

"Syd," he breathed. She let him rub her hand. "I love you, Syd. I never stopped. You know that."

She was done with this, but she needed to know one thing. Carefully, she asked, "If I did… miss you… Then what would we do about it?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? It isn't rocket science, Vaughn." She didn't care, but she also wasn't going to let him get away with this.

"Lauren—"

"Lauren?" Sydney snatched her hand back. "You come here and tell me you love me, but you haven't even squared things away with your wife? What were you looking for, Vaughn? To keep her and also have me on the side?"

Vaughn sputtered and blanched. Sydney was on a roll, as she had been with Sark earlier… was it just a few minutes ago? It felt like a lifetime. Sark… she remembered something, and felt even angrier.

"What are you even doing here?" she continued. "Why now? Why today? Is it because it looked like I was finally moving on? You heard that I had some sort of date last night, and you came over here to see how serious it was. That's it, isn't it? You don't want to break it off with Lauren to be with me, but you don't want anyone else to be with me either?"

"Syd, it isn't like that."

"Don't call me Syd." She was hysterical now, from relief and anger and freedom. "You know what? Just go. I don't miss you. I don't miss what we had, not when it was clearly so weak. I don't want you back. I don't want anything back. I want to move forward. Without you."

"You don't mean that. You can't. Look at you, you're crying. Syd, please."

"If I'm crying, it's because I'm realizing how much time I've wasted crying over you before now. Sitting here night after night, drowning my sorrows in cheap wine." She thought, and then smiled, thinking of Sark in the back room. "But you know what? I haven't done that in weeks. And anyway, I drink more expensive wine these days."

The tears were really rolling down now, though she wished they would stop. She wasn't crying over Vaughn. She was crying for herself, for the shambles her life had become. God, she wanted out. She wanted out so badly. She deserved better than this. She laughed like a crazy person. Vaughn tried to hold her hand again, but she scrambled back to the far end of the couch.

"Please. Sydney."

"I think you should let yourself out, Agent Vaughn."

There was fury in her eyes, mixed in with a little lunacy. Vaughn may have been an idiot, but he knew what was good for him.

"I just want you to be happy," he said just before heading out.

"Me, too." Now that she'd actually done it, the impetus behind the tears turned into something else, something horrifically sad. All the emptiness washed over her anew. It hurt. She didn't know what it was. Maybe closure? If it was, then closure hurt like a bitch.

The door shut and Sydney was left, for one awful moment, alone and crumpled on the couch, barely breathing.

Then Sark was suddenly there, hovering hesitantly beside her. Sydney could hear him opening his mouth and inhaling in preparation to speak, but each time, the words failed to come out. This wasn't the time for quips or sarcasm—even though she was sure the ripeness of the situation left him bursting with ideas for commentary.

Just as his lungs kept preparing for comforting words he was ill-equipped to say, his arms kept twitching open for hugs he was equally unaccustomed to giving. Sydney made it easy for him by letting herself fall into his lap. Sark's arms came to rest awkwardly over her as she cried.

Sydney was forced to accept once and for all that the days of disdaining him were over. They were friends. Or at least were doing an excellent job playing at it. Sometimes that amounted to the same thing.

"I don't know what to do," he confessed into her hair.

His admission of uncertainty was a bigger signal of intimacy than any personal tidbit he had ever told her or any hickey he could ever give her.

"I… I just want to go somewhere. Away."

It wasn't exactly what she meant, but she hoped he would understand. This wasn't about leaving the country. This was about leaving herself.

Sark stood up, and, without the support of his body, Sydney curled downwards into the couch.

She looked up and brushed the stray hairs from in front of her eyes. Sark's hand was outstretched, and he gazed at her with a calm and determined expression.

"Come."

"Where?"

"Away. Just for the evening. Trust me." He saw her confusion, interpreted it as hesitation, and stepped back with a sigh. "I'm sorry. I should know better than to ask that of you. In lieu of trust, I will appeal to your belief in the strength of my self-preservation skills. This will bring us to no harm. I promise you that."

But the correction was unnecessary. The question of trusting him hadn't even crossed her mind. Sometimes, with people like him, or like her father, a simple acknowledgement of a person's devotion to logic overrode any need for trust. It was more reliable than trust, she'd come to realize, especially when back-dropped against what she'd gone through with Vaughn.

"Okay."

She seemed surprised that she was agreeing so readily. "I just need a moment to verify the address."

"You don't know where we're going?"

"I do. But it's a place I've never been before."

A few minutes later, they descended into building's underground parking lot disguised as Sydney's middle-aged upstairs neighbors, her in a blond wig and him in preppy khakis and a blazer she had never seen before. He opened a Mercedes door with some sort of skeleton key and hot-wired it to start.

"We'll return the car in the morning, and they will be none the wiser," he reassured her.

"Are we staying in town?" It was already after eight. Sydney looked at the mysterious bag he had quickly packed while she'd been grabbing her wallet and keys. She couldn't imagine where they were going.

"Yes. And that is all I will say."

They drove in a calming silence. Sydney couldn't remember the last time she'd been a passenger, riding shotgun. It was nice. She rested her arm on the window ledge and let the wind blow by her elbow. She fiddled with the radio and settled on a classic rock station.

She didn't know where they were going, but the fresh air was helping. Sark glanced at her once or twice and smirked with approval.

It wasn't long before they pulled into a driveway of a small but cozy beachfront house in Santa Monica. Sark jimmy-rigged the garage door open and parked inside.

Sydney wasn't sure what she'd expected, but it wasn't this: a completely ordinary and well-lived-in bachelor pad. There was travel memorabilia on the walls, a beat-up futon in the corner, and an unvarnished Ikea media center. There was a beautiful view of the sea from the living room, which opened up through glass doors to a sizeable deck.

This couldn't be one of Sark's hideouts. It was a nice enough house, but even in a temporary haunt, Sark would never be caught dead with unvarnished Ikea. Or Ikea in general.

"What is this place?" she asked as she walked around.

"I'll let you figure it out for yourself."

And that's when she spotted it: in a corner of the living room almost hidden behind an overgrown plant was a poster board covered in photos. Most of them included a familiar-looking guy who was older in some of the pictures than in Sydney's memory. A guy with moppy black hair and glasses, whose lanky frame barely filled out his tee-shirts and jeans.

Sydney's gasped when she recognized Francie in one of the pictures. And then herself. A younger version of herself, with a happy, open, uncomplicated smile. Pigtails and an LL Bean backpack. This was high school. This was before spies and intrigue and memory wipes. This was the person Sydney used to be, before her life had branched into a seemingly inescapable swirl of nightmares.

She turned towards Sark, who was watching her from the other side of the room, with his hands in his pockets. His expression was unreadable, possibly sad.

"This is Adam Silverman's apartment," she said.

"He is, luckily for us, on a business trip this week. I don't know how well you've kept in touch over the years, but he has become a moderately successful civil engineer."

"How…?"

"After being forced to quickly decide upon that alias last night, I spent the morning following up on the man's whereabouts, in case a situation arose in which—"

Sydney shook her head. She didn't want to hear the logistical steps involved; she wanted to understand _why_.

Sark understood her gesture and stopped himself. He sat down on the couch and stared into his folded hands. "As her handler, Allison kept me updated on her preparations for the Francie Calfo mission. Her job was to collect as many facts about Francie's life as she could. We'd never done research on anyone like that before, on people like her. Usually we had only to worry about memorizing bank codes or names of chiefs of staff… the important details of important people. But with Francie…"

"Francie was normal," Sydney whispered. She untacked the photo from the board and came to sit next to Sark on the couch. They sat with their knees almost touching, both staring at the picture.

"She procured a copy of your high school's yearbook," Sark continued after a minute. "We studied it together a couple of times when I was in LA. We both have—had—photographic memories. I could still rattle off all names in there, if I needed to. I would quiz her, pretend to be people from high school or university, to see what she would say and how Francie-like her reactions were. It was almost enjoyable, those preparations. Pretending, just for an hour, that we had these lives."

He smiled sadly and finally looked up at Sydney. The detached sarcasm that almost always lurked behind his eyes had completely disappeared. Sydney almost flinched from the intensity of his stare, almost wished the mask were still there to keep him from being so naked.

"It wasn't my idea to have Allison take Francie's place. And it wasn't our idea to kill your friend. I want you to know that. We thought it would be most prudent to simply abduct her so she would be on hand in case we needed her for information. She could have one day been returned to you. But the orders came from above. You lost your friend, Sydney, and so did I, in more ways than one. In the end, Allison was on her way to choosing that life over me. I could see it in her eyes—they were Francie's eyes, but they were just as dear to me. She came to fancy Tippin and all the things being with Tippin meant, all the things being Francie meant. A life that included people like Adam Silverman. After spending these past few weeks living with you, I can't say that I blame her. Although the objects of my desire are not precisely the same."

There it was again: an ambiguous, almost declaration of… something. Always phrased to give her a choice: to let her either politely ignore his meaning or else to take the plunge. He always worded it to avoid the possibility of getting rejected, because it was so hard to prove that's what he meant. He'd done it last night, and once or twice before that. Who knew how many more times he'd done it without her catching on.

Sydney wondered what it said about her that she was now catching on so often.

Even putting that aside, Sydney didn't know what to say. She couldn't say she was sorry, not when the hurt had been done to her, too. She felt simultaneously glad she had armed herself against this by telling her father as well as a pang for having betrayed Sark further if indeed this was all as real as it seemed.

She didn't know if he'd done it on purpose (probably, though; everything Sark did was intentional), but the best way to get Sydney to put aside her problems had always been to get her to focus on someone else's problems. Sark sounded like he needed as much cheering up as she did. Or, at least, deciding to cheer him up might take her mind off things.

She slapped him on the thigh and swung herself up. "Come on. Let's sit outside."

He smiled. "I'll see what your friend has in the bar cabinet."

Sydney frowned as she watched him amble over to the kitchen. "We can't drink his stuff. That's stealing."

"I doubt he'll notice. And even if he does, this isn't stealing. I think of it more as… gaslighting."

Sydney chuckled, and relented, despite herself. "I'll see what's outside."

Adam Silverman had locked all the patio furniture up before leaving for his trip, but it took only a moment for Sydney to pick the lock and release chairs, low tables, and a gigantic hammock. Sark came outside a minute later with a bottle of wine, some San Pellegrino, four glasses, and a bag of cheese and crackers.

The night was warm enough to be comfortable, but a cool breeze blew down the beach. While Sark finished putting up the hammock, Sydney went to the bedroom to grab some blankets. She found them in the first place she looked, on the top shelf of the closet. It disconcerted her how much she felt at home here. A normal, kind of fratty guy's room. It reminded her of freshman year of college, before any of this started. From a logistical point of view, it wasn't that different from her own apartment, but there was a freedom here, a lack of complication that her life had been suffused with for years.

And not even being here with Sark reintroduced that sense of complication. She wondered if that was the point he was trying to make: that he could be Adam and she could be his friend Sydney Bristow who came over all the time for wine and cheese on the deck. Or was he maybe trying to tell her that life with Vaughn could never have been this, and that she therefore shouldn't feel sorry for having lost him?

As usual, Sark was leaving all interpretations up to her.

On her way back, she peeked into the bag he'd brought. Inside were their pajamas and toothbrushes and a suit for her to wear to work tomorrow. Nothing at all sinister. She smiled to herself.

When she returned to the deck, she found him stretched out on the hammock, but having left plenty of space beside him. He'd already poured out two glasses of wine and arranged the snacks for easy access. Sydney unfolded the blankets over him and then gingerly got on without tipping Sark or the hammock over.

They lay quietly, staring out at the ocean, and leaning over every few seconds to take a sip of wine without spilling it on themselves. Sydney felt the warmth flowing from her side into his. Despite having been sleeping in the same bed for awhile, this was the closest and longest physical proximity they'd ever maintained while awake.

"I truly believe that simplicity is a virtue in managing any situation," Sark said languidly as they rocked back and forth. "Mr. Vaughn's great failing is that he managed to make a simple thing very complicated. Disappearances and marriages…"

The words came surprisingly easily. "…It shouldn't have mattered. And now it doesn't anymore. It's as simple as that."

That was all they had ever or would ever say about it.

After a few minutes, Sark asked, "You said you wanted to get 'away'. Did my plan… did coming here help at all?"

"Like you said, it's only for a night. But for a temporary fix… this is perfect. Thank you."

She squeezed his hand and felt him shudder. But by the time she turned to look at him, he'd recomposed his face (or maybe it had never reacted).

"Does this pay my debt for the love mark on your neck?"

"Not even close."

He poured more wine for both of them. "You do realize that you've just thanked me for making you an accomplice to breaking and entering."

Sydney shrugged. "I thought we were just gaslighting."

"I am a deplorable influence."

"Don't give yourself compliments. It's completely transparent. Anyway, it's not like I'm such a goody-two-shoes."

"Yes, you are."

Sydney remembered something. "Oh no."

"What?" he asked.

"The disk. From the mission. We forgot to look at it last night. And now..."

"Hush. We can do it tomorrow, Miss Goody Two Shoes."

"Those don't sound like the words of a man who's desperate to get his fortune back and start his retirement."

"As I said, Sydney, I've been enjoying myself. You could try to do so as well. I promise you, a little enjoyment is less likely to kill you than your usual pursuits."

He squeezed her hand, and this time it was her turn to shudder. And realize that, yet again, they'd been holding hands for the past couple of minutes, and had no intention of letting go.

"I'm enjoying myself just fine," she said, not caring how he might take it.

"You wouldn't mind if I poured myself a victory glass of wine, would you? For that might be the sweetest accomplishment on my already extensive CV."

Sydney smacked him playfully. "Only if you pour one for me, too."


End file.
